Aiming for first place

We first reported on Hebei Yingang in 2005 (WBPI issue 4, p54) when it had three domestically-made panel production lines and a recently installed Dieffenbacher CPS continuous MDF line. Things have moved on since then. The company’s first line was for particleboard production. Built in 1993 by Sichuan Donghua Machine Co, it had an initial capacity of 15,000m3/year, later upgraded to 50,000m3.
The following year saw an MDF line by the same manufacturer added at Zhengding, with an ultimate capacity of 40,000m3. In 1998, Yingang added another MDF line, this time from Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Co Ltd. It had the first 15-daylight press in China, 4x16ft, and an initial capacity of 50,000m3/year, which was subsequently doubled. The next logical step for a growing Chinese panel business was to move to continuous production and so Yingang bought its first continuous press line from Dieffenbacher of Germany and this went into production in September 2004. Capacity is nominally 150,000m3, although the line in fact produced 206,000m3 in 2007. The investment, according to Yingang’s company brochure, was RMB320m. In those early days, Hebei Yingang belonged to the Hebei Salt Industry Department, part of the China National Salt Bureau.
“China National Salt Company (CNSC) is government owned and wanted to dramatically expand its presence in the panel business in China so it submitted a plan to the state to expand Yingang’s wood based panel business to enable it to draw money from the Salt company to fund this growth,explained general manager of the panel business Mr Fan Hua Zhi. “CNSC wants Yingang to be the number one in China – to be bigger than the Dare Group – in a very short time.The next phase in the expansion of Yingang was the purchase of a second continuous press line from Dieffenbacher, this time for the production of particleboard. This line produced its first board in September last year and is rated at 200-250,000m3/year. Investment this time was RMB300m. All three domestically-supplied multi-opening production lines have now been closed down and sold to make way for the particleboard line.
There is no more room for expansion at Zhengding and there is also not sufficient wood in the area to supply additional production capacity, said Mr Fan. Therefore, in further pursuit of its rapid growth target, CNSC has purchased land in both Hubei and Sichuan provinces and has ordered the machinery for two more continuous panel production lines. The two lines on order are to manufacture ultra-thin MDF and each has a nominal capacity of 200,000m3/year. They are to be supplied by Siempelkamp and thus equipped with ContiRoll generation eight presses. The first of these new lines is scheduled for installation in Nanchong City, Sichuan in September this year. It will have a 28.8mx8ft press.
The second is scheduled to begin arriving in March 2009 at Suizhou City, Hubei. That one will have a 33.8mx8ft press and will otherwise be the same as the Sichuan line.
Both lines will be fitted with Siempelkamp’s special features for safe production at high speed. This includes a fibre brake roller above the mat former, below the pendulum chute, consisting of two counter-rotating combs, to decelerate the fibre flow and avoid fibre densification and improve spreading homogeneity across the mat width. To protect the steel belts (an increasingly expensive item), a new diagonal saw after the pre-press and before the reject mat hopper will prevent mat doubling when the mat breaks on rejection (as it would in a conventional system) and a new compactor will be fitted before the ContiRoll to crush any lumps or reject mat with uncrushable content such as metal pieces.
These two lines represent a total investment of RMB850m. Mr Fan also declared that a further three MDF lines are planned, although their locations and the dates for their installation have yet to be decided. However, their capacity is intended to be 300,000m3/year per line. Thus the future target for total panel capacity for Yingang at this stage, including Zhengding, is somewhere around 1.7 million m3/year. That would certainly make them a very significant player in the Chinese panel industry. But that is all in the future. In the meantime, the second Dieffenbacher CPS line at Zhengding is producing particleboard from recycled wood, in the form of city waste wood, veneer remains from plywood producers, and sawdust. Yingang also buys in some prepared chips. (The MDF line uses mainly poplar from plantations).
The factory produces only raw board. “There are many small companies in this area which are laminating boards and we support them,explained Mr Fan. Resin is produced on site and this will also be the policy for the planned new lines, with each site having its own resin production facility. At Zhengding, urea formaldehyde (UF) and melamine urea formaldehyde (MUF) resins are produced with 64% solids in two resin plants – one for MDF and one for particleboard. At Zhengding, of course the resin production is for both MDF and particleboard and, while MDF is mainly manufactured to E2 grade, particleboard is normally E1.
“This means we can obtain a slightly higher price, although it depends on the market,said Mr Fan. “Our thin MDF is mainly for decoration and packaging material so is covered and only normally requires an E2 specification.The markets for both particleboard and MDF are in Hebei and Beijing and so are relatively local to the factory. “This particleboard line is intended to produce thin board down to 4mm, although we are still producing 16mm in these early days,said Mr Fan when WBPI visited Zhengding in March. Dieffenbacher was responsible for the supply of everything from the dryer to the finishing line, while the chipping and flaking equipment came from Chinese suppliers. The heart of the line, the CPS press, is 20m long and 8ft wide.
Dieffenbacher subsidiary Schenkmann-Piel Engineering (SPE) supplied the dryer and, although the company has supplied around 20 dryers for MDF/HDF producers in China, this represents the company’s first order for a particle dryer from this country. The dryer is direct-heated with a drum diameter of 4.6m and length of 24m. Italian company PAL srl supplied the chip screening and cleaning systems and also the glue blender. Pal’s sister company Imal srl was responsible for the supply of the glue kitchen and a range of on-the-line and laboratory quality control components, such as thickness measurement and blow detection in a combined unit after the Dieffenbacher Zaisenhausen flying cross-cut saw.
Also from Italy came the Imeas six-head sander which is used for sanding only the particleboard as Yingang does not sand its MDF production. Sander dust and board trim provide the only fuel for the Chinese-made energy plant. The cut-to-size plant was supplied by Chinese manufacturer Sufoma and is used to cut full size panels only, serving both the particleboard and MDF lines. Unfortunately, I would have to say that Yingang would not win any prizes in a ‘best kept mill’ competition. The buildings are very tired and neglected and even some of the new equipment has sustained damage, notably the many dents in the drum of the dryer, while the outside areas leave a lot to be desired.
However, this is basically a 15-year-old factory and Yingang’s future plans involve completely new start-ups where the company can start with purpose-designed, purpose-built factories rather than trying to squeeze modern production lines into spaces designed for old discontinuous ones.
There seem to be mixed feelings in China about the market for particleboard, with some companies which went away from MDF and built large-capacity particleboard lines finding the market is not all that they had expected or hoped for. “There are many small family businesses making particleboard in China and the quality is poor. This has given the panel a bad name in the past,said Mr Fan. “I see that the MDF price is decreasing in China now, but the particleboard market is holding steady. This is also the only continuous particleboard line in the north of China, although there are several single- and multi-daylight lines and that helps us. “In the second half of this year, and for the next five years, maybe the MDF price will go down because of so much extra capacity in China, but I believe the particleboard price will stay good because the capacity is not expanding much. Prices of MDF go up and down but particleboard prices will be more stable.