SierraPine has cut production and layed off 75 workers at its Rocklin, California, MDF factory because of the housing market collapse and the state's stringent air quality regulations, reports The Sacramento Bee.
President Jim Skinner said demand had fallen for MDF and particleboard from the Roseville, California, company's facilities, which he said were struggling to compete with an Oklahoma competitor operating under less stringent air-quality regulations.

Louisiana-Pacific Corporation (LP) may have to pay up to US$900,000 to amend an economic incentives package for its new Thomasville OSB mill, which has been idled since shortly after it opened early in 2008.
Local and state governments gave more than US$17m toward construction of the US$260m plant in Clarke County and in exchange, the Nashville, Tennessee-based company agreed to employ at least 130 workers for 12 months at the mill, The Associated Press reported in December.
The chairman of the Clarke County Commission, Elma Averett, said the county wants LP to pay as much as US$900,000 to change the incentives deal so it can lay off the idled mill's 138 workers.
LP could be forced to pay back at least US$2.9m, according to AP. A Clarke County administrator said the county owes US$6.6m on the money it borrowed to use as incentives for the plant, and it has a US$462,145 payment budgeted this year. The county put a US$25 tax on license plate renewals to pay the debt.

During the Christmas holidays, my wife’s mother told me about her visit to the Solar boat museum next to the Great Pyramids of Giza.
The Solar boat was built more than 4,600 years ago to ferry the body of Pharaoh Khufu to its resting place. It was then dismantled and buried in a pit on the southern side of the pyramid, where it rested until discovered in 1954.
The Solar boat was painstakingly reassembled and finally installed in a purpose-built museum in 1968. All 1,224 pieces of cedar and acacia that make up the boat are either keyed or stitched together with natural fibre rope; there are no nails, screws or glue.
This is fascinating, but the most impressive aspect is that this wooden boat has survived in an almost perfect state for all these years. No special treatments had been applied to the wood – it was preserved because of the dry, warm climate.
Water is the key. Without it many chemical reactions that are part of the normal breakdown processes of natural materials slow significantly or stop altogether.
Therefore, if we want to make long-lasting wood based composites, and by long-lasting I mean hundreds of years if kept indoors or tens of years if outside, then we need to either ensure somehow that the wood in the product always remains dry, or, reduce wood’s affinity for water.
An impermeable coating is unlikely to work or be practical because of the need to cut, shape, screw and nail composite products. All these processes would break the seal and allow water to enter and once it is in, the impermeable coating will trap the water in the product and thereby accelerate its breakdown.
A chemical modification of the wood so that it becomes hydrophobic and self-sticking would be very interesting.
Particles and fibres have high surface area to volume ratios so if their surfaces were modified so that they were hydrophobic, but self-sticking, then composites with a very uniform level and distribution of modified material could be made. There has been much progress in the chemical modification of wood over many years, but a one-shot commercial process has still to be developed.
Even today’s particleboard and fibreboard can last a long time. A study conducted by the Buildings Research Establishment in the UK showed that particleboard which had been stored for 40 years had the same mechanical properties as when the samples were originally tested. So if, by some chance, a piece of particleboard made today were to be found some 4,600 years later, will our successors be intrigued by the intricate way we laid down each particle?

Western Pneumatics, Inc is a
26-year-old, technically-focused, US firm with a
concentration on niche markets and a growing overseas presence. The current economic pinch has had a large influence on its overseas efforts, as is true of many forest products suppliers.
The company today operates with 175 employees on its 10 acre site; at one time, it employed 350.
Originally a high- and low-pressure pneumatic conveying system manufacturer, that is still one of the company’s
specialities, along with mechanical conveying systems and rebuilding used equipment, while grinding equipment is another popular product.
Bruce Livesay, vice president and one of the firm’s four owners – President Rick Nicol, Rick Sanders, and Robert Marshall are the others – said: “We started in the 1982 recession when the wood products industry was going through a terrible time.
“I had been in business with my dad and then a company called Caruthers hired me. Caruthers went out of business and two of its salesmen and I started Western Pneumatics”.
He credits his company’s success to good people. “That’s all good business is – good people,” he declared. “One of our mainstays has been good products and delivering on time.”
The firm started pneumatic work, became involved with finger-jointing, and started building custom products for other companies.
“There are fewer and fewer manufacturers out there,” Mr Livesay observed. “We have an advantage: nobody else builds finger-jointers in the US. Having those kinds of niche markets helps us. We do about US$30m a year.
“Also, we have been riding the coat tails of all the MACT [Maximum Achievable Control Technology for environmental emissions] regulations as most of our customers had to comply with MACT to stay in business.”
This generated a huge volume of emission control work.
Overseas, one present project is for a mill in Torzhok, northwest of Moscow, Russia, where 10 container loads went to an LVL mill. “It’s a nice plant,” commented Mr Livesay. “We have a presence in Russia and we would like to pursue that. They have nearly half the world’s timber.
“We’re not sure about China yet, although we have a finger-jointer there. The toy market in China has just fallen off the face of the earth. Where there is wood [in the world], we probably have a finger-jointer.
“We’re in a wait-and-see mode. I think everybody in the wood products sector is just holding their breath. We don’t want to lose customers in the US, but people are going by the wayside. But this is the time – if you have money, you should be doing something.”
As an example he cites Flakeboard’s MDF mill, visible from his plant. “They’re putting in a beautiful resination system and Pneumatic Systems is installing that extensive system.”
He said his company builds RTOs (regenerative thermal oxidizers) and wet precipitators for others. “MACT went for the biggest companies first and now the smaller companies. Everyone wanted to wait,” he declared.
Western Pneumatics has been working with overseas dealers. “But we really need to go in to sell. Our competition is primarily from Germany and Canada. We’re biased because we feel we have the best machines; our finger-jointers are stout and do what we say they can do. We have a horizontal, not a vertical joint, although we do have plans to build a vertical-type machine in the future,” said Mr Livesay.
“We took the North American concept of horizontal finger-jointing and enhanced it with quality machinery, modern technology and computerised controls. Whether the need lies in moulding products, mill work, structural, or dimension lumber, the precision craftsmanship and follow-up service that Western Pneumatics provides assures the highest-quality end product.”
Initially, the market was moulding and millwork, then studs and now engineered wood products.
Mr Livesay pointed out that the company website decreases the size of the world.
Four technicians are based in the Eugene, Oregon, plant. Most of their travel is to US mills, but they do travel all over the world installing and checking installations.
Twelve to 16 engineers respond to orders and inquiries, with all drawings using AutoCad; a new customised software system started operation in January.
The engineers work directly with production. “If we have a problem we can deal with it and solve it right here.”
The company has 50,000ft2 of manufacturing space. “We build all of our products right here,” Mr Livesay said. “We outsource very little. Our quality control is excellent. We’ve always had a high standard.”
The layout includes a pneumatics
fabrication shop, machinery assembly shop, painting facilities, electrical assembly shop, installation company and
maintenance shops, administrative, sales and engineering departments.
Rail tracks serve the site, but most equipment goes out by road trucks.
To minimise downtime, a mill can call Western Pneumatics for the loan of a replacement part, which is immediately shipped from the shelf. The mill then sends in the old part for repair or
rebuilding.
The company builds bag house filters on support structures for large industrial dust collection applications as primary dust collectors, using reverse air for bag cleaning. The dust is blown back into the cyclone section at the bottom. Remote bag houses are located on the ground.
The WP high-speed abort gate protects a downstream filter from sparks or fire. The detection system directs sparks or fire either away from a filter or from going back into the building.
Many models of damper are also included in the product line.
The firm designed and manufactured a high-speed structural finger-joint system, running at up to 500ft/minute, for glulam beam and I-joist flange applications.
Another product is a structural finger-joint line for studs, I-joists, glulam beams and other applications. Models have maximum input lengths of 8ft, 10ft, 16ft and 20ft, thicknesses from 5⁄8in to 2in and widths from 1⁄2in to 8in. These feed a high-speed crowder line running at up to 500ft/minute.
Pneumatics’ heaviest finger-jointing line will handle 5⁄8in to 2in thicknesses, 11⁄2in to 8in widths, 4in to 36in lengths, or 51⁄2in to 48in using a wide chain.
Veneer dryer exhaust and cooling ducting, and press enclosures with venting and ducting, along with surge bins and truck bins, are important to wood panel plants. Most of the products involve either air quality work or
materials handling.
Among other production machines, the plant floor includes a Stealth computerised cutting centre, five CNC machining centers, Precision lathe, outside micrometers to 40in, vernier calipers to 80in, 200-ton press break and a number of Demag overhead cranes.

About a year ago, I said that
the negative economic rhetoric was overblown and that people were ignoring too many of the positive factors which would support recovery in housing – and therefore in North American panel markets.
The pessimistic view was generally accurate, but for the wrong reasons. Along with other ‘experts’, I failed to anticipate the implosion of the global financial system, frozen credit markets, bank failures and huge government interventions.
What started out as the ‘sub-prime crisis’, limited to housing, has since spread to the whole financial system, revealing large portions of it to be a huge pyramid scheme based on ‘smoke and mirrors’, rather than sound management.
The consequences of this financial meltdown have spread at an alarming rate through the ‘real’ economy, not only in the US, but through Europe, Asia and much of the global economy; almost all major countries are either in recession, or have seen a marked slowdown in growth since late 2007. Global economic data are likely to reveal economies rapidly contracting as 2008 ended.
The first quarter of 2009 is likely to reveal further large declines in GDP – the second quarter will remain in or close to negative territory. The best hope is for a global turnaround early in the second half in response to massive fiscal and monetary stimulus. Many believe it could be 2010 before we see significant recovery.
The speed at which the global economy has moved into recession has been alarming and forecasts for 2009-10 are lagging the rapid changes in the real world economy. The probability is high that the downturn will be steeper and deeper than anticipated; that recovery will largely be delayed until 2010-2012; and that few countries will be immune.
The breadth of the economic malaise is perhaps the most worrying feature. Unlike other economic cycles over the past half century, where large pockets of relative strength could at least partially compensate for weakness in another region, the current crisis is broad-based and those pockets are fewer.
As at end-2008, the expectations for annual GDP growth shown in Table 1 are the assumptions used for CFPA’s assessment of North American panel markets.
Housing is key
The credit crunch in October-November 2008 hit one of the most credit-sensitive sectors of the US economy, housing, already severely weakened by the sub-prime fall-out. The bad news is largely self-evident:
l  November housing starts in the US fell to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 0.625 million – the lowest in over 50 years. Single-family starts were just 0.441 million (SAAR) and multi-family starts 0.185 million. Multi-family starts held up well through most of 2007 and the first half of 2008, but the drying-up of credit has hurt multi-family projects even more than single-family in recent months
l  November new home sales dropped 35%, year-on-year, to 407,000 as inventories of unsold new homes climbed to the equivalent of 11.5 months of sales.
l  Existing home sales, after holding up through most of 2008 at around five million, dropped 9% (year-on-year) in November, largely due to the credit crunch. November inventories of unsold existing homes also exceeded 11 months’ supply.
These numbers are likely to be as weak, or worse, in December, January and February, but it’s not all bad news. Here are some more positive housing market facts:
l  US mortgage rates are at 50-year lows; qualified buyers will have no problems securing a mortgage
l  Home prices have tumbled and continue to fall. US government data show that in the first 11 months of 2008, average prices of new homes of US$291,500 were 7% below the 2007 average (the highest year ever). Prices for existing homes averaging US$243,600 in 2008 are 8.5% below 2007, and 9% below the 2006 peak of US$268,200. (these are national averages)
l  Lower interest rates and prices have made housing more affordable. This is already being reflected in higher existing home sales in the US West (up 18% year-on-year in November, as average prices here have dropped more than 20%).
l  Inventories of unsold new homes plunged to 374,000 in November, down 25% in one year. Any pick-up in sales will quickly reveal insufficient inventory, leading to a rebound in housing starts.
l  Underlying housing demand (driven by population growth and household formations) is well above current production. Even with lower immigration, and reduced vacation/second-home demand, the US needs to add 1.7 to 1.8 million units every year. The excess supply built in 2004-6 is being rapidly exhausted; US housing starts in 2008-9 will average only 0.87 million units per year. By 2010 there will be a rapidly mounting pent-up demand for housing, triggered as economic growth accelerates.
The chart above illustrates US quarterly housing data over the past four years and presents a forecast for the next three. The housing trough (at record low levels) is expected to run from the fourth quarter of 2008 through the second quarter of 2009.
By the second half of 2009, housing is expected to be in moderate recovery, but even in the fourth quarter, housing production (single- and multi-family and mobile homes combined) will remain well below one million (SAAR). However, this level will be reached early in 2010, and by that year-end, CFPA expects housing production to be close to 1.5 million.
But this will still lag underlying demand; only in 2011 will production match this demand. Production is unlikely to start releasing pent-up demand before 2012-13. Consequently, in those years, housing production will likely exceed two million units a year, approaching the pace set in 2005-6.
North American Panel Production
Housing, remodelling and related industries such as furniture are central to the prosperity of North American panel producers. With housing at historic lows, and furniture production tumbling, 2008-9 will see exceedingly low levels of panel consumption and, therefore, production.
The chart below and Table 2 summarise recent historical data; provide an estimate for 2008 production; and a forecast for 2009-11, based on the GDP and housing assumptions presented here.
Panel production is expected to hit bottom early in 2009; low inventories – and the early stages of economic recovery – will see it edging higher in the second half. Production at the end of 2009 should be well above a year ago (though fourth quarter 2008 was particularly miserable).
Nevertheless, this improvement will be a positive base for 2010 when production is expected to better 2008, though not to be as high as 2007.
By 2011, North American OSB and MDF/HDF production are expected to be setting new records (27 million m3 and 5.75 million m3, respectively), while softwood plywood and particleboard production will be up from their cyclical lows.
As with any forecast, there is risk – currently somewhat greater than normal!
We believe there is no question there will be an economic recovery but timing it is difficult. Our forecast could be too optimistic but, at this point, seems reasonable.
Housing’s recovery could be even slower and more painful than anticipated, but it could also be faster. For example, the recovery from the 1981-82 recession accelerated rapidly even before the wider economy demonstrated much strength. In the deep current gloom, it is easy to forget how resilient the housing sector can be, given low prices and mortgage rates.
For the panel production forecast, the largest risk, other than timing, relates to trade. Currency could easily change the forecast: A strong US dollar would allow for higher imports of plywood from Brazil and Chile; MDF/HDF from Europe, Latin America and Asia; and maybe particleboard from Latin America and Asia.
For MDF/HDF, a principal assumption is that significant new North American capacity will displace even more volumes of thin MDF/HDF imports, thus leading to record North American production, but a strong dollar could easily change this.
In addition, if recent weakness in the Canadian dollar persists, it could boost Canadian panel output more than in the US, once recovery gathers momentum.
In conclusion, this brief overview provides some insights into most likely trends and risks in North American panel markets. However, it is too narrow a forum in which to explore all the nuances, subtleties and ‘shades of grey’ which will define them over the next several years.

By focusing on architects and interior designers, the ZOW show in Bad Salzuflen has been on a
trend-setting journey since 2006.
The architectural lounge – which will be bigger and more informative than ever before, says Survey – will offer visitors an attractive point to start discovering the diverse ZOW product range in Hall 22.2.
Guided tours around the exhibition will start here, design highlights will be presented here and special talks run in cooperation with selected partners will also take place here. The architectural lounge is billed as the perfect place to pick up ideas and exchange impressions.
Lightweight construction is now said to be the latest hot topic and this will set the scene at ZOW. Both young and well-known companies in the international supplier industry will present their newest
solutions in lightweight construction, which apparently are all set to revolutionise the furniture and interior world in the coming years.
As well as offering simple handling, it is primarily the low transport, energy and packaging costs which make lightweight construction solutions so interesting.
The Lightweight Network (IGEL) will form the focal point of the exhibition, which encompasses many companies involved in lightweight construction.
The step from lightweight construction to material is not a large one. At ZOW, for the first time, visitors will have the chance to attend a material exhibition entitled ‘materialZ’ in Hall 23.2, organised by the German subsidiary of the world famous Material Connexion
material library in Cologne.
Material producers from Germany and neighbouring countries will present the highlights from the international material scene. The exhibition will look at the latest trends including topics such as smart materials, sustainability, acoustics, new surfaces and structures. So ‘materialZ’ will offer architects and designers a new forum for individual design ideas.
Bar codes are yesterday’s news, but RFID is the technology of tomorrow. RFID stands for Radio Frequency Identification, an identification technology based on electronic data exchange.
With this technology you can quickly pinpoint the location of a product anywhere in your company without having to handle each item individually.
Horst Koitka, the managing director of Löhne-based IT company ‘abaco’, will be demonstrating, together with his partners, how RFID technology works. At the RFID factory in Hall 19, he says visitors will be able to discover the benefits of this
innovative technology.
RFID is already in widespread use in other industries but is still relatively new in the furniture sector. The demonstration that Horst Koitka will give will be on an impressive scale: The RFID factory is about 30m long and traces the route taken by a furniture item through the supply chain, from the supplier through industry to the trade, including transport by a haulage company.
E3S European Solid Surface Show in Hall 22.2 will display the trends in solid surfaces and engineered stone which have taken place at ZOW since 2006.
Here, manufacturers and suppliers will present new products and technologies from this universally used material.
‘iFurn’, the online database for the
day-to-day work of designers and
planners in the furniture and interiors industry, is celebrating its birthday.
One year after its premiere at ZOW 2008, the ‘iFurn community’ is getting together in hall 32.1 for this celebration. Virtual communication through the exchange of data is aimed to become a physical meeting place to swap experiences.
It’s hard not to think that furniture and modern entertainment systems are somehow meant for exclusive use only. Why else should the industry continue to supply furniture that takes the old cathode ray tube TV sets which are long gone from the market, and why else do end customers still have to drill a hole the size of your fist into load-bearing elements to feed through the cabling? The fact that none of this has been necessary for some time now will be evidenced at the new Mediapoint feature at ZOW.
This special exhibition will demonstrate how these allegedly irreconcilable realms of technology can function together.
The challenge facing furniture manufacturers and the supply sector is what do I need to do or take into account to support the trend toward providing universal access? What requirements does my furniture need to meet in this age of multimedia? Mediapoint is a display of specific interior settings which demonstrate how living rooms and workspaces, kitchens and bathrooms, can be designed and fitted out right now to support media access – and networked with each other.

With all the consolidation that has been going on in the SE Asian panel manufacturing industry it is in a way refreshing to find a company which is small, wishes to remain small, and knows exactly where it wants its market position to be.
Such a company is Segamat Panel Boards (SPB) in Segamat, Johor, in the south of peninsular Malaysia.
Owned by the Japanese Takeuchi
family, this company has been quietly producing its niche MDF products on a Mende-type calender line since it made its first board in 2003.
The Takeuchi family formerly owned another MDF factory with Mende-type line, in Masai, Johor and two continuous lines in Merbok as a joint venture called Merbok Hilir. The Merbok lines are now part of the Korean-owned Dongwha Group, while the smaller Masai factory is now part of the Evergreen Group
of Malaysia.
Recently, Segamat Panel Boards has expanded its operations in two directions.
Firstly, early in 2008, it bought an Indonesian-based particleboard mill,
formerly known as PT Novopan, in Pontianak, West Kalimantan.
Renamed PT Indopan Panel Boards (IPB), this mill has a Becker & Van Hüllen eight-daylight press line with a capacity of around 9,000m3 a month.
“Historically, Pontianak was very big in the wood business and a lot of particleboard plants like ours set up there in the 1990s,” explained Peter Fitch, the English ex-pat who is managing director of the Segamat MDF operations. “There has since been a sharp decline in the availability of logs and so sawmills and plywood mills have closed. However, in the first quarter of 2008, political and policing changes reduced the illegal export of logs and the local Pontianak government decided to encourage downstream processing of the remaining wood resource, of plantation acacia, rubberwood and offcuts of mixed tropical hardwoods, from the remaining local sawmills.”
The Novopan mill had ceased production six months before SPB bought it from the receivers.
“We were able to restart the line quite easily and our immediate plans are to improve the quality, efficiency and productivity and to sell to the local domestic market, initially.
“In the longer term, we intend to produce low-emission board for export and, given the right market conditions, we have space on the site to build a new, probably continuous, line there,” said
Mr Fitch.
“We went into this project 50/50 with a local joint-venture partner, which is one of the largest Indonesian furniture makers, and each company put in some experienced staff as well as re-employing some of the original local ex-employees.”
In addition to the panel production line, the factory came with a Hymmen low pressure melamine line and a short-cycle press line.
The second major recent move for SPB was the purchase of the entire production line of the former Greentech factory in Minden, Louisiana in the US from the receivers, who took control of Greentech in 2007.
This was a five-feet-wide calender-press line making thin particleboard and was first installed in 1996.
“Although this line had ceased production six months earlier, when I went over to Minden we produced particleboard from pallets straight away, which was also a good way of clearing out the site of waste wood at the same time as making panels and testing the line!” said Mr Fitch, only half joking.
Delivery of the line was one third of the way through at the time of WBPI’s visit to Segamat in early December 2008, representing a stock of 42 containers of machinery so far.
“We are looking to produce thin particleboard in 2.5 to 6mm as an alternative to thin MDF, especially for more price-sensitive markets,” said Mr Fitch.
In December, the ground was already being prepared and levelled on the Segamat site in preparation for the new factory buildings and Mr Fitch hoped to have the line up and running in April or May of this year.
He is no stranger to such pressure, having built up a Mende-type line for PTP in China under very difficult circumstances, and in a very short space of time, eight years ago (WBPI April/May 2002, p31).
The purchase includes a Bürkle laminating line for paper overlay.
“Initial capacity will be the same as Greentech had – 33,500m3 a year – but we hope to increase that figure by 20 to 30%, probably in a year’s time,” said
Mr Fitch.
Another major project for SPB involved moving another company which it has owned for many years to the Segamat site.
Formerly located in Johor, UC Gravure Sdn Bhd is a printer of decor paper for application to panels by bonding with urea formaldehyde or PVA (poly vinyl acetate) resin.
A new factory building was erected at Segamat three years ago to accommodate UC Gravure’s two printing lines, which also come under Mr Fitch’s jurisdiction as director of the site.
With all this investment in a new factory in Indonesia, a new line for Segamat and the relocation of UC Gravure, SPB did not ignore the facilities it already had – far from it.
In 2007, the company put a new 3.3m diameter main heated drum in the calender press and modified the whole press.
“We also put in a new drum number two and fitted three densifying rollers in place of roller number three at the bottom of the press,” explained Mr Fitch. Kelzenberg of Germany supplied the drums, while Binos, also of Germany, supplied the engineering and upgraded the human-machine interface (HMI).
In the same year, SPB purchased a spike roll former from Binos and the cumulative effect of all these upgrades was an increase in line speed of about 15%.
“It enabled us to achieve a higher density product, and a more consistent
product, of up to 900kg/m3 density,” said the director.
The line is mainly producing 2.3 to 3mm MDF but can also manufacture up to 6mm board, although the lower price of this panel is not so attractive.
With declining availability of rubberwood, Segamat has also installed a new debarking and chipping line specifically for mixed tropical hardwood, employing a Fuji Kogyo debarker and disc chipper. The company does not mix its wood raw material, keeping to 100% rubberwood or 100% mixed tropical hardwoods in every board produced.
“We clean the logs thoroughly and have two-stage sifting to minimise the amount of latex getting through to
production,” said Mr Fitch.
With a relatively small capacity of 75,000m3 a year, SPB maintains its philosophy of focusing on niche markets. “We modify our process to suit our customers’ specific requirements.
“We are doing a lot more low-emission [of formaldehyde] boards and we have CARB (California Air Resources Board) phase one and two certification already, inspected by PSI,” said Mr Fitch.
Phase two (P2) is not actually due until 2011 so SPB is ahead of the game here. “We have also had JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) certification since 2006 and are able to offer F*** and F****, mainly for Japanese customers,” he said.
The panels are offered in 100% rubberwood or mixed tropical hardwood. “It is all about giving the customer a choice,” said Mr Fitch. “You have to be focused on what the customer wants in order to survive.”
Perhaps partly because it is a Japanese-owned company and the Japanese know a lot about business efficiency systems, SPB has implemented an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system on the management side, covering all aspects of the business from purchasing to sales and everything in between, with the data all processed on a central computer system.
“This ties in nicely with our ongoing internal programmes of LEAN manufacturing,” said Mr Fitch, referring to the business/software system for maximising optimisation of resources in a company.
“The only way to maintain our
competitiveness is to be super-efficient because we are not a big producer,”
concluded Mr Fitch.
“Our ambition is to remain a small, niche player, committed both to quality and to our customers.”

Acquired at the end of September 2008 from the Hong Leong Group, Hume Fibreboard Sdn Bhd joined the existing mills of the Evergreen Group in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia and became known as Evergreen Fibreboard (Nilai) Sdn Bhd.
Evergreen, headed by the dynamic J C Kuo, paid RM213m (US$59m) for the factory, which brings two MDF lines in Nilai (40km from Kuala Lumpur International Airport to the south of the capital city) to his growing family of mills.
The two production lines comprise a 10-daylight Siempelkamp hot press line, which went into production in 1992, and a Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous press line which started up in 1996.
“The multi-daylight line was the second MDF line in Malaysia and is very reliable, with very little downtime and glue consumption lower than on the continuous press line,” said Mr Kuo. “The company had also been well run and financed by Hong Leong.”
Although the ContiRoll first started production in 1996, a major fire in late 2001 caused severe damage to the line and the replacement press re-started in 2003.
The multi-daylight line has an annual capacity of 90,000m3 from its 1.83x4.88m press, while the 8ftx23.6m ContiRoll can produce 160,000m3.
The wood supply for the Nilai mill is 50/50 rubberwood/acacia and mixed hardwoods from the locality and the mill is currently undergoing certification to FSC (Forest Stewardship Council)
standards for its wood supply.
All the production of the Malaysian and Thai mills of Evergreen Group have certification to CARB (California Air Resources Board) standard for formaldehyde emissions, inspected by PSI.
The Nilai site also has certification to ISO18000 (occupational safety & health), quality standard ISO9002 and environmental standard ISO14000. All Evergreen Group factories have ISO9002, except PT Hijau Lestari Jaya in Sumatra, and that was in the process of achieving certification last December.
In fact, talking of meeting standards, a rather special part of the former Hume Fibreboard operation which came with the MDF lines was its laboratory, extensively upgraded by the former owners in 2005. Hume always attached great importance to quality.
With all the appearance of a medical centre, the facility is equipped with a
laboratory press from Siempelkamp, designed to simulate the ContiRoll, and a mechanical fibre blender.
For measuring those all-important formaldehyde emissions, there is a perforator cabinet and a spectrophotometer. Dessicator tests are carried out in a
separate, air-conditioned, room.
Hume always supplied some of its
production to Japan and thus made good use of the laboratory in its product
development for that market, offering Super E0 panels.
A mixture of E1, E2 and E0 is produced on both lines at Nilai.
The resin is supplied from Evergreen’s own resin plant at Batu Pahat, further south on the peninsula.
Since the Nilai factory has three-stage forming on its production lines, it could in theory use pMDI resin in the core of the MDF.
“There is potential to increase capacity by adding another refiner and we could then, in theory, have a separate dosing system for pMDI,” agreed Mr Kuo.
“However, it is only in the long term that we may try to increase the capacity. For the moment we are looking at minor improvements; there is some room for improvement in costs here, but the plant runs well and makes a good product. With integration into the group, there could be some streamlining to cut costs – for instance, using our own resin supply has already saved quite a lot of money and we are carrying out our own maintenance rather than sub-contracting it as Hume used to do; that was a high cost before.
“There are other synergies too. For example this factory is similar in terms of spare/wear parts requirements to our Hat Yai [Thailand] factory, which also has Siempelkamp ContiRolls.”
In fact the group, with its several acquisitions and own start-ups totalling one particleboard and 10 MDF lines, now has machinery from most of the world’s major suppliers, somewhere.

Bringing it all together
The headquarters of the Evergreen Group is at the original Batu Pahat plant, where it all began for this rapidly growing company.
“All data from all the factories is collated in Batu Pahat and eventually we will centralise purchasing for all the plants there,” said Mr Kuo. “We have expanded the group a lot in recent years and we have a Hume culture, Takeuchi/Merbok culture and an Evergreen culture. We are selecting and keeping the best from each. We are a mix of all our plants in terms of people
and experience.”

Mieco is part of the Bandar Raya Developments Bhd Group of Companies. It started up its first particleboard (or chipboard) line in 1976 and claims that, in the process, it became the first panel maker in Malaysia to utilise rubberwood as its raw material.
The company today has two particleboard factories, located in Gebeng and Kechau Tui, Pahang and these have a combined capacity of approximately 900,000m3 a year. The most recent of these lines is the one in Kechau Tui, near Kuala Lipis.
Mieco’s headquarters is on the 30th floor of an office building in the centre of Kuala Lumpur and it was there that I went to interview managing director Dato’ Yong Seng Yeow (the word Dato’ is equivalent to the title ‘Sir’ in the UK).
Mieco’s first line was built in Semambu in 1976. However, it ceased production early in 2005 as its Dieffenbacher single-opening press was no longer economical, explained Dato’ Yong. The line is ‘mothballed’ and awaiting sale.
The second line, in Gebeng, has a Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous press and was still running to full capacity at the time of our meeting in early December 2008. All the production of this line is subject to value-adding, with melamine faced chipboard (MFC), paper faced electron beam-cured panels, polymer-faced boards and direct post-formed panels for use as worktops, door elements and office automation system (OA) furniture. Of this production, 40% is for domestic markets and 60% is exported, to over 20 countries.
Mieco Livin Style is a range of DIY book shelves, CD towers and other items of furniture.
Mieco had a long-standing relationship with German particleboard maker Kunz and since Kunz’s takeover by another German panel manufacturer, Pfleiderer, the relationship has continued and Mieco is now selling Pfleiderer’s high pressure laminate, Duropal, as part of its range.
“We also carry out benchmarking on downtime, reject panels and so on and exchange this and technical information with Pfleiderer,” said Dato’ Yong. “We thus know where we stand in terms of efficiency compared with European producers and can see areas where we need to improve to be more efficient. We also benchmark costs to see where we can save money.”
The most recent plant at Kechau Tui (Lipis) went into production in 2005 with a brand new Dieffenbacher CPS continuous press line (WBPI Feb/March 2005). The press is 41.6m long and the foundations and all ancillary equipment were built to allow for extension to 60m – something which Mieco still plans to do when the market is right.
“The plant was doing well until August last year, then the market turned down and crude oil, and therefore resin, prices rose steeply. That was a dreadful time for us,” said Dato’ Yong. “We are currently running at about 65% of total capacity at Lipis; we have stopped Sunday working and are running shorter shifts whereas we used to run 24 hours, 362 days a year.”
That hasn’t changed the company’s intention to invest in improving efficiency at the mill and plans are well under way to replace the energy system at Lipis.
“We are currently using diesel fuel to heat the thermal oil and have been planning to put up an energy plant utilising waste from our factory and oil palm waste too. That project will go ahead and will take about 15 months to realise,” said the managing director. “We are talking to a number of potential suppliers worldwide at the moment. However, the Malaysian government is encouraging the use of oil palm waste to make biofuel for transport at a substitution rate of 10-15% and that will increase competition for raw material for our energy production.”
In terms of competition in the panel market, Dato’ Yong predicts there will be changes: “I believe there will be some consolidation in Thailand and Malaysia. In Malaysian MDF we have already seen it happening with Dongwha and Evergreen [taking over some mills]. There used to be six or seven companies in Malaysia but now there are basically two, plus Robin Resources.
“In particleboard, the smaller mills will find it difficult to compete. The biggest competition is from Thailand with Vanachai, Metro, Green River Panels, Panel Plus, Rayong – and to a lesser extent SPB.
“But the demand is still there for particleboard and it was not generally being affected by MDF until recently when MDF prices came down, but I think that is temporary.”
Mieco is considering going into MDF and other related panel manufacturing itself in the longer term to enable it to offer the full panel range from one source.
“Right now, though we are talking about survival,” said the managing director. “We have to pull through this difficult period, then we will be stronger. Then we can look at expansion. We will also consider building a glue plant, given our current capacity of around 900,000m3 on lines two and three combined.”
When the company goes ahead with its planned press extension at Lipis, the mill will have a capacity of 2,000m3/day rather than the current 1,500m3, making a resin plant even more desirable.
In fact line two in Gebeng, built in 1995, has a nameplate capacity of 620m3 a day but is now capable of 800m3, thanks to a little ‘tweaking’ by Mieco staff.
Looking to the future wood supply, Mieco is actively engaged in research & development (R&D), in cooperation with a Malaysian institution and an overseas partner, on replacing rubberwood and tropical hardwoods with plantation species with a shorter rotation.
“We are fortunate that in Mentakab in the state of Pahang – between our mill sites in Kuantan and Lipis – we have 10,000 acres given to us by the government for plantations and so we can either plant the results of our R&D, or acacia, or rubberwood,” said Dato’ Yong.
“The government will have to facilitate manufacturers who export,” he said. “It needs to get its act together to increase the amount of rubberwood plantations and it needs to help us bring down our energy costs. A couple of years ago rubber prices were very high and that meant the trees were not cut. The government has given some encouragement to replanting, with a RM200m (US$55m) grant, and that is a good sign.
“There are two programmes – for latex production and wood production – in which the government gives the planters a 3% ‘soft’ loan where they only pay interest after they have harvested the wood or the latex. This will help but the gestation period is very long.”
Whether markets are good or bad, panel producers have to meet all the latest standards and Mieco has been active in that area too.
“We have had CARB [California Air Resources Board] certification since last October [certified by PSI] and we have just gained JIS [Japanese Industrial Standard] certification,” said Dato’ Yong. “We already had JAS [Japanese Agricultural Standard] but JIS is at a higher level. We are producing F**** and F***, and Super E0 panels, using conventional urea resins with formaldehyde scavengers.”
The company is also in the process of getting its wood supply certified with chain of custody – certifying that it comes from a legal and sustainable source – and Dato’ Yong expected that certification before March this year.
Mieco also has ISO14001 environmental standard, 18001 occupational health and safety, 9001 quality assurance and Lloyds register quality certification.
The company is clearly ready for the upturn in the market when it comes and has many plans in place to take full advantage of any improvement and to capitalise on its strengths as a sizeable particleboard producer.

The Green River Wood & Lumber Manufacturing group has annual sales of US$450m emanating from one furniture factory in Taiwan, five in China, one in Malaysia and seven in Vietnam. It also started production at its only panel factory (so far) in Hat Yai, Thailand in September 2008, where it makes particleboard (see p36).
Green River started in business in
furniture making in Taiwan and moved into Malaysia in 1988 as its first
overseas venture.
The Malaysian furniture operation is located in Port Klang, in the state of Selangor on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia and not far from the capital city Kuala Lumpur.
Each furniture factory in the group operates as an independent unit and the Malaysian operation is the only one to concentrate solely on dining furniture. Other factories variously produce bedroom furniture and kitchen cabinets and hardwood flooring.
The furniture produced at Port Klang is not of the pile-it-high-and-sell-it-cheap low end variety but solid dining tables with quality veneered surfaces, and solid wood chairs, aimed principally at the mid to upper end of the North American furniture market, where 75-80% of production goes. The balance mainly goes to Russia.
Although Green River has just started up its own particleboard factory, the table tops in Port Klang are in fact made principally of MDF, employing two thicknesses of 18mm laminated together to make a 36mm nominal top. Around 10% or less of the panel product used in the factory is particleboard – it is more suited to the cabinet work carried out in the kitchen and bedroom furniture factories of the group, or sold in its local market to outside customers.
The panels in the base storage units of some tables, where there are wine racks, cupboards and/or drawers, are also MDF.
“We used to use E2 grade MDF but from mid-January 2009 we switched to 100% E1, P1 due to the CARB (California Air Resources Board) regulations in the US,” said Albert Hsueh, who is in charge of R&D marketing for the Port Klang company.
“We are currently thus meeting CARB phase 1 (P1) but in 2011 we will meet P2, which will need at least E0 panels.”
The CARB rules are quite stringent and testing of a piece of furniture for compliance can even mean ‘de-constructing’ that item and testing its individual components – such as the MDF without its factory-applied veneer layer. CARB’s arrival has been well publicised, but Mr Hsueh has still found that customers are not necessarily aware of the implications.
“Under CARB, we are considered to be a ‘fabricator’. Often, our customers in the US are unaware of the effect of the CARB regulations and we have to supply the information to them. In fact, one or two customers didn’t even realise the regulations existed – and one of them was actually in California!”
As it would be hard to differentiate raw boards which did comply with CARB P1 from those which didn’t, and separate stocks would have to be kept, Green River has moved totally to P1-compliant MDF.
“We are one of the first factories in Malaysia to be fully compliant,” said Mr Hsueh. “It was a big headache for us – especially as we had to dig out a lot of the required information on our own – but we are there now. The P2 level seems unreasonable at this time but we will have to comply of course.”
Some components of the furniture that is assembled and finished at Port Klang are made on the premises and some are shipped in from Taiwan and Vietnam, or from local sub-suppliers. Turned table pedestals for instance are made in a Green River-owned facility close to the main factory, while chair backs in the white (ie unstained/
unfinished) are bought in. Seat frames and stretchers are made on site.
The chairs are made of solid rubberwood and the seats are upholstered inhouse. The chairs and the veneered table tops and legs are stained and finished to match each other in cherry, oak or birch finish.
There are five ranges of dining furniture, known as Contemporary, Cottage, Transitional, Classic and Mission.

Handmade in Malaysia
Much of the work at Port Klang is done by hand and there are 800 workers of many Asian nationalities employed there.
The chair backs, frames and stretchers are dipped in tanks of stain and then hand wiped and hung on a moving overhead
conveyor to dry.
Until the end of 2008, seat bases were plywood but Green River was unable to find a CARB-compliant plywood manufacturer and has thus had to change over to solid wood panels. However,
plywood table aprons (deep edges) for circular tables are CARB-exempt because they are bentwood.
In the raw materials warehouse are packs of particleboard from Metro of Thailand, and of MDF from DongWha of Malaysia, all marked up as P1 compliant. We have to keep those labels for two years as part of our CARB compliance,” said Mr Hsueh.
The factory consumes around 900-1,000m3/month of MDF panels and 200m3 of particleboard.
Veneer is hand-laid onto the MDF table tops, which are then hand fed to a press, after which they are passed through Sheng Shing wide-belt sanders. They are then quality checked before being stained and spray finished.
Where circular table solid wood edges are to be embossed with a pattern, this is pressed into the wood in a special curved press with appropriate dies.
At the end of the line, and following visual inspection at each stage of the production process, the table and chair kits of parts are packed into cardboard boxes, with moulded polystyrene protection, for shipment to any one of 160 customers worldwide. Everything is made to order – the factory holds no stock of finished furniture. It does, however, have a two-storey showroom on site to show off its different sets of dining furniture to best effect.
Green River as a group has no intention of standing still with the production facilities that it has. “We are looking for investment opportunities in countries that are new for us and are always keeping our eyes open but in the current economic climate we are taking our time. We will wait and see what happens in 2009,” concluded Mr Hsueh.

For a company vastly experienced in lumber processing and furniture manufacture, Green River Panels (Thailand) Co Ltd was taking a big new step in setting up a state-of-the-art particleboard line from scratch.

Green River Wood and Lumber Group is the parent company and has furniture making operations in China, Vietnam and Malaysia (see p38 in this issue) and sawmills in Thailand and Malaysia.
Sawmills are of course excellent providers of raw material for particleboard mills and that is why Green River decided to build its first panel plant adjacent to its sawmill at Bangklum near Hat Yai in southern Thailand.

One year ago, WBPI visited Siam Fibreboard’s Hat Yai site and reported on the imminent start-up of its new 18MW electrical energy generation plant, which now has the
trading name GRE Energy Company Ltd (Thailand).

The Metro-Ply group of companies is one of the oldest players in the field of panel production in Thailand.

It started out as a teak sawmill, going into plywood production in 1973, followed by entry into veneer production, wet process hardboard, doors and finger-jointed hardwood.

Indeed, the company is still active in all those areas but it was in 1995 – a time of considerable activity in SE Asia for composite panel production lines – that the company entered the MDF business.

Formed by a team of dedicated scientists and engineers with over 20 years’ experience in the development, manufacture and application of formaldehyde-based resins for the wood panel industry, NTL says it provides the industry with “Professional consulting services and innovative practical, applied and proven solutions to improve the quality and efficiency of panel production”.
The company’s resin technology encompasses particleboard, MDF, plywood and OSB manufacture and decor paper impregnation.
Realising that in today’s increasingly demanding and competitive panel industry, mills are constantly seeking more cost-efficient and optimised resin processes in order to be more competitive, NTL says it has developed formaldehyde-based resin systems to increase board production while reducing glue dosage and formaldehyde emissions from both panels and dryers, without affecting the production process and board properties – and without any overall cost increase.
“This is the reason why NTL was formed and is the origin of its founding principles, providing wood panel mills with our state of-the-art, cutting-edge, proven and cost-efficient formaldehyde based resin binder systems,” says Nikos Pargianas, technical director and founder of NTL Chemical Consulting. Mr Pargianis adds that he has worked in field application and technical support for many years and has been involved in projects with some of biggest wood panel plants worldwide.
“We’ve invested heavily in our R&D facility at EKETA Technology Research Institute, which is actively engaged in technological collaborations with renowned research bodies such as the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Chemical Polymerization & Process Engineering Research Institute,” says
Mr Pargianis.
“In addition, strategic relationships are in place with other European universities and technical institutes which allow NTL to follow closely any new technology developments and market trends in the wood panel industry.”
The technical director adds: “NTL’s biggest strength is its R&D, founded on years of industrial experience and the requests of our customers. The primary focus of our R&D is to develop resin technologies which are innovative, add value and are cost-efficient in meeting our customers’ specific needs”.
The modern, fully-equipped laboratory at the Technological Park of Research & Technology Centre in Thessaloniki was completed only last year.
“Our experienced scientists have already helped us to develop innovative resin technology products which have proved superior to some of the biggest competitors in the marketplace,” says Mr Pargianis, proudly.
The company says its R&D is specifically targeted on providing its clients with solutions to their problems on a continual basis, to meet their ever-changing requirements and to anticipate industry trends.
“By relentlessly upgrading and developing resin formulation know-how, and by turning innovative ideas to realisable value-added and practical solutions, NTL can offer unparalleled services to its clients,” claims the technical director.
“Importantly, all these developments are undertaken by NTL with the utmost responsibility for the environment,”
he adds.
NTL says it has a global network of scientists who have hands-on experience in developing and applying a wide range of formaldehyde-based resins to more than 250 wood panel production mills around the world.
“We’re close to our customers because we truly focus on providing them with service, quality and an understanding of their exact needs,” says Mr Pargianis. “Our role is in providing them sound solutions and ongoing technical support, including our complete technical/consultation
services and new resin technologies.
“This service extends from training our clients’ personnel at their R&D and resin plants to practical application of the technology in their panel manufacturing units.”
Mr Pargianis says it is because NTL is a relatively small company that it can give this personal approach to its customers, while larger companies may only be able to offer fixed technology, offering little flexibility to the client.
“In terms of our products we can provide clients with a diverse range of our high-performance formaldehyde based resin and resin additive technology systems which are suitable for virtually all wood based panel producers,” he says.
The company says it can provide a wide range of resins for particleboard such as UF (urea formaldehyde), UMF (urea melamine formaldehyde), MUF (melamine urea formaldehyde) and PF (phenol formaldehyde) for E2, E1, E0 and Super E0 board production, as well as additives such as activators, scavengers and special hardeners.
For MDF, NTL provides a range of resins such as UF, UMF, MUF, PUF (phenol urea formaldehyde) for E2, E1, E0 and Super E0 board production, as well as additives.
For plywood, it offers a range of amino-based resins such as UF, UMF, MUF, MUPF (melamine urea phenol formaldehyde) for E2, E1 and E0 board production and phenolic resins such as PF for hardwood, softwood or tropical wood, PF fast-curing, PF low-cost and additives (hardeners).
In addition, NTL can provide other PF and PRF (phenol resorcinol formaldehyde) resins for laminated veneer lumber (LVL); and phenolic resins (core and surface), or MUF or MUPF for the surface layer (light colour) of OSB.
The company’s range of resin technology also includes impregnation resins and additives such as UF and MF for low pressure laminates. For post forming there are MF and PF for high-pressure laminates, as well as PF for phenolic film, hardeners, plasticisers, modifiers and release/wetting agents.
NTL claims all its resin technologies are environmentally friendly and capable of meeting or exceeding the various performance criteria required by the most stringent European, American and Japanese Standards, ensuring performance to V20, V313 or V100, as well as formaldehyde classes E2, E1, E0 or Super E0.
James Vlachos, NTL’s sales & marketing manager, says: “NTL is well poised to meet all the demands of our customers and as such we offer a wide variety of other product technologies including PF, PRF and RF applications in fibreglass (insulation), concrete forming, medium density overlay, parquet foil and door skin production. We also offer PF for electro-technical laminates, additives for manufacture of flame retardant Kraft and a range of resins used for foil and paper lamination on ‘hot roll’ laminators such as those made by Hymmen and in Gypsum board and plywood.”
Mr Vlachos adds: “We also provide other resins [for other industries], mainly through our associate partner network, while, apart from the wide range of resin technology we offer to our clients worldwide, we also offer our international experience in the engineering of formaldehyde and resin production plants.
“We provide clients with tailored design and procurement for turnkey formaldehyde, resin and resin additive plants of different sizes through our strong association with our professional partners.
“We offer complete process technology, engineering design, procurement, technical assistance, supervision and complete training services to our client’s plant personnel for the construction of formaldehyde production and resin plants for local manufacturing as the most cost-effective alternative”.
Mr Vlachos says the future of NTL is to strive to maintain its strong international presence.
“We are building on our worldwide reliability and proven cost-efficient resins, and on providing clients with just the right solutions wherever they are needed for attracting new licensees in new and growing markets,” he says, adding that NTL has a strong client base in SE Asia and South Korea and is currently embarked on setting up new business licensees in Russia, India, China and Latin America.
“As far as we are aware, NTL is the only company that backs its motto in writing, which simply states: ‘If you
don’t save, you don’t pay’,” concludes
Mr Vlachos.

Bischweier in southern Germany has been home to a panel manufacturing business for just over 40 years, having started particleboard production in 1968 as Gruber + Weber.
In 2001 the factory became fully a part of Kronospan Holdings GmbH and since then the group has poured a lot of money into the site to bring it in line with the group philosophy of efficiency in making the right product for the
right market.
It all began with a multi-opening press line producing particleboard which
could be laminated in a melamine-facing press line.
Family-owned business Gruber + Weber invested in its factory over the years, adding more short-cycle pressing capacity in 1983 and 1993 and additional warehousing in 1998 – a building also intended to house a new cut-to-size plant which was never realised.
The factory closed down in 2001 and was then bought by Kronospan, which restarted particleboard production in January 2002 on the original 10-opening hot press. Production capacity was then 360,000m3 a year.
In the following year, after a lengthy process to obtain the necessary planning permission, the new owners erected a new factory building on the site and installed a Dieffenbacher CPS continuous press line with a new chipping line, screening line and sifters.
The new press was 42.8m long and 2.4m wide and had an initial annual production of 400,000m3.
As the new line started production in August 2003, the old multi-daylight line – also by Dieffenbacher – was closed down; the two lines did not run simultaneously.
Investment continued in 2006 with the installation of a new Schelling panel sawing plant. This produces cut-to-size panels in both raw and melamine faced board and has a capacity of 120,000m3/year.
A short-cycle press line was also brought from Worms in Germany and refurbished and installed at Bischweier, fitted with new electronic controls and wear parts.
The refurbished line in fact comprised two short-cycle presses alongside each other and was originally by Dieffenbacher. The presses were modified and upgraded by Wemhöner.
In a separate building, there is also a Wemhöner short-cycle line from 1994/5.
These three presses together gave the Bischweier operation a surfacing capacity of 24 million m2/year in 2007.
Attention turned again to the Dieffenbacher CPS particleboard line in 2007 when preparations began to increase the line’s annual capacity to 850,000m3.
The equipment installed in 2003 had been designed to anticipate this increase in capacity but a new log yard was required, together with a new chipping line, extended screening facilities and new chip silos.
“Wet chip preparation was completely modified, including the moving floors,” said Oliver Lauer of Bischweier’s technical department.
A new dryer was also added and this was equipped with the latest emissions-cleaning technology in a ‘UTWS’ System; this employs a heat exchanger, dry electric filter and other technology developed by Kronospan to eliminate dust, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and odours.
To increase thermal oil heating capacity for the longer press, a new gas-powered heat exchanger was installed. The company has modified the combustion chamber from the old dryer in order to use that to heat the thermal oil.
In general, Bischweier aims to generate 90% of its energy by burning waste wood.
In order to meet the 850,000m3 capacity target, the continuous press was extended to 52.8m. This was accomplished during the month of July 2008, with removal of the old equipment, installation of the new and extending the press all being completed in one month.
The new warehouse built around the same time incorporates two railway sidings for shipping the company’s production out and for bringing resins in from Kronospan’s Lampertswalde plant and from the BASF factory in Ludwigshafen.
A large part of the site was still undeveloped when Kronospan bought it and there was thus ample room for the company to execute its expansion plans.
Bischweier is in the Black Forest area and there is thus a good wood supply, explained Mr Lauer. Sawmill slabs and small roundwood come from a 100km radius and all Bischweier’s wood supply is certified to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) standards.
However, there is some problem caused by the rush to biomass energy production, Mr Lauer admitted.
“Pellet producers are competing for the wood supply and some even utilise logs because the biomass energy business is subsidised,” he said.
Chipping employs one Bruks Klöckner 1500kW chipper with a two metre diameter rotor and Bischweier’s chips are sorted into one of three compartments in the chip store, which has a moving floor, according to categories of softwood, hardwood or mixed. The chips are allocated to a compartment from the chipper area control room. This enables some
tailoring of boards to particular
customer requirements.
The sawdust silos are enormous, at 25m in diameter, and with a capacity of 9,000m3 each.
As part of the stringent planning conditions imposed by the local authority, the chipper hall is lined with special sound-absorbing building blocks.
Covered belt conveyors carry the wet chips to the knife ring flakers and to the dosing silos, thus avoiding release of dust into the atmosphere.
The drum dryer has a drying capacity of approximately 70 tonnes of water evaporation per hour actual and was designed within the Kronospan group.
There are seven Pal of Italy oscillating dry screens and two wind sifters by Schenkmann & Piel of Germany (part of the Dieffenbacher group).
The gluing system is by Imal of Italy and this company also supplied the on-the-line quality control measurement
systems.
Forming employs four heads – two for surface and two for core layers.
Minimax supplied the Minifog system which guards the continuous press against fire.
There is a Steinemann Satos 10-head sander to finish the board surfaces.
An underground tunnel is used to take the packs of finished boards under the yard to the new warehouse without risking the outdoor elements.
In the warehouse there is an ingenious stock tracking system in which sensors/transmitters set in the concrete floor ‘talk’ to the fork lift trucks which are connected to the main stock control computer system; the driver scans the label on the pack and the computer tells him where to place it in the warehouse. The same system also enables the driver to locate the correct pack and remove it from stock for a given customer order.
Part of the same sensor system is also used to control the parking of road trucks in the warehouse ready for
loading.
Grades of particleboard produced include E1 (with urea formaldehyde resin) and Kronospan’s own ELE (extra low emission) panels, which fall somewhere between E1 and E-zero for formaldehyde emissions. A special melamine urea formaldehyde resin is used to produce the ELE panels.
A certain amount of moisture resistant board is made, mainly for flooring applications, but this is a niche product, said Mr Lauer.
Particleboard thicknesses of 8 to 40mm are produced and most production goes to the furniture industry with customers in France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany forming the main part of the factory’s customer base, although small quantities have also been shipped to China and other parts of Asia.
Since it started its expansion and upgrading plans in 2003, Kronospan has spent in excess of e160m on its Bischweier operation, raising production volumes of both raw particleboard and surfaced boards, improving the quality of production and ensuring compliance with stringent environmental regulations.
Within a 500km radius the factory can access markets from the Netherlands in the north to Genova in the south and from Orléans in the west to Prague in the east, illustrating the Kronospan philosophy of being close to both its chosen markets and to a reliable wood supply.

The Department of Forest Products Technology is the only university in Finland which offers teaching and research on every aspect of forest products technology. This means the processing of wood from forest to construction materials, printed paper and veneer.
In addition to an extensive international exchange of students, research scientists and lecturers, many research projects collaborate with research groups abroad, says the department. Its goal is to be ‘a leading, globally networked and renowned centre of excellence in the field of forest products education and research’.
The principal research focus of the Laboratory of Wood Technology is the technology of wood and wood products, the associated manufacturing processes, product properties and their competitiveness and development.
To this end, the laboratory is equipped with some large-scale production equipment to enable it to create real-life
production processes.
On entering the labs, the equipment which has immediate visual impact is a Raute log peeling lathe. Extensively
modernised when it was installed in 2006, it can peel logs up to 1400mm in length at speeds of up to 300m/min. It is equipped with a fixed nose bar, automatic positioner and two-roller supporting devices. A modern control unit enables lathe settings to be easily changed.
A heated soaking tank on the site can accommodate up to 10 logs at a time.
The lathe is complemented by equipment for measuring both the visual properties of veneers peeled from different wood species and surface roughness, using computer vision equipment. A Mecano arch houses the camera-based defect detection system and there is also a Metriguard 360MHz machine for measuring moisture and density of veneers using radio waves, giving information about average moisture content and density as well as their distribution throughout the veneer. The same equipment can measure modulus of elasticity of the veneer using ultrasound. The Metriguard is itself calibrated by an earlier version of the same machine.
Research into peeler knife life is
another facility the labs can offer.
A small Raute veneer dryer simulates real dryer conditions by continually
moving the veneer sheets up and down in the hot air flow and is equivalent to a 20m dryer, explained professor Matti Kairi who had industrial veneer production experience with Kerto laminated veneer lumber (LVL) at Finnforest before coming to TKK.
The main laboratory is also equipped with a hydraulically-operated hot press in which panels up to 50x50cm can be produced at temperatures of up to 2000C.
For coating the veneer with resin, there is a roller coater. The lab also has a spray applicator but this is mainly used for particleboard production, said professor Kairi.
“This building was previously a graphics laboratory for the university so we had to strengthen the foundations to take the weight of all this machinery,” he said. “We also erected a building outside to house the hydraulic pumps to limit noise levels in the laboratory.”
Adjacent to the main machine room are smaller laboratories for small-scale testing. One of these rooms contains optical microscopes and a current project is looking at the fracture behaviour of wood. A scanning electron microscope is also available on the university site.
In another room, bending and tensile stress measuring machines are available.
In a separate area of the laboratories there are also extensive facilities for
testing solid wood and wood products.
Research in the four laboratories of the Department of Forest Products Technology includes:
l The physics and chemistry of wood, fibres and products and wood and fibre as a source of new materials
l Manufacturing processes, the chemistry of pulp, paper, printed matter and other products
l Wood technology and timber construction, technologies, products, functional modes, processing systems, markets, competitiveness and their development
l Process industry environmental
technology, especially in the wood processing industry.
Teaching in the Wood Product Technology faculty at TKK covers topics including wood material science, manufacturing processes of primary and
secondary wood products, the technical end-uses of wood, as well as the development of competitive businesses.
To achieve this, the laboratory says it has fostered close working relationships both with the other laboratories within the department and with the departments of Architecture and Civil Engineering at TKK. There is also active co-operation with TKK’s partner universities in Europe and abroad.
The department is claimed to be a ‘unique and internationally unequalled body which covers all central areas of forest products technology and its refining chain’.

Kronospan’s SIA Bolderaja Ltd mill on the outskirts of Latvia’s capital city Riga has been the subject of a considerable amount of investment in the last three years.
The name Bolderaja may be familiar to readers of WBPI as we first published a story about the company’s particleboard mill in Issue 5, 2005, following a visit to the factory that June, when Bolderaja was owned by the BBG group of Lithuania.
Kronospan Holdings Ltd of Cyprus bought the particleboard mill in July 2005 and much has changed since then.
What Kronospan bought was a Rauma Repola 19-daylight hot press line with a capacity of around 170,000m3 of
particleboard per year. The press size is 5.7x2.1m.
What it owns today is the same press line, but with an annual capacity of 320,000m3. Investments in wood preparation and the dryer enabled the mill to reach the full potential of that 1975-vintage press, explained Sebastian Ritter of SIA Bolderaja Ltd. Emissions controls were upgraded at the same time.
The original two-head former was replaced with a three-head ClassiFormer the year before Kronospan purchased
the line.
“That hot press is like an old Mercedes car – if you look after it well, it will run forever,” said Mr Ritter. “We also have other multi-opening presses in the group and so have the expertise to get the best from them and produce a high-quality, premium segment product.”
Panels are produced in 12 to 24mm and in sizes of 2750x1830mm and 2440x1830mm.
However, the 28ha site on which Bolderaja sits offered a lot more potential to its new owners than simply producing more, and better quality, particleboard than before.
Thus it was that in mid-July 2007, Bolderaja joined the ranks of European OSB producers, starting production on a brand new continuous press line with an ultimate capacity of 500,000m3/year.
Initially, the line was producing around 300,000m3/year but a second wood preparation area was commissioned in October 2008 to bring it up to that target figure of 500,000m3.
This means that today’s total combined panel capacity for the Riga site is around 820,000m3 and that means the site needs a lot of wood raw material
of course.
The strategic location of Riga was the reason why Kronospan acquired this site. Customers today range from as far away as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as well as Scandinavia and the UK.
“The available wood supply was another reason why Kronospan bought this site,” said Mr Ritter. “All the wood comes from a radius of 200km from Riga.
“For OSB we mainly use spruce and pine, with some alder and aspen logs. For particleboard we use a small amount of bought-in hacker chips but mainly sawmill residues which are a complete mix of birch, spruce, pine, oak and aspen. We make hacker chips from this material on site and then produce the flakes.”
However, wood supply is only one part of the equation when Kronospan is choosing locations for its greenfield mills, or the ones it purchases, like Bolderaja. The market is the other.
“Riga is very important strategically, being close to the Russian, Scandinavian and central European markets for our products,” said Mr Ritter. “The market in Russia is becoming more and more important for OSB and the demand will be huge.
“We are also supplying other markets which are still growing, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan – they are not huge markets but they are growing.”
Sabine Smith, who is based at Kronospan’s mill at Chirk in the UK added: “Kronospan is concentrated on the emerging markets to the east, while our competitors are more western-
oriented and that is a strength for us.”
That is another important consideration in locating its mills: Kronospan not only looks at wood supply and markets per se, but also at the growth potential of the region.
Another advantage for the Latvian company in supplying Russia is that the rail gauge (the width between the two rails) is the same as in Russia, unlike the western European rail network, so loads do not have to be transferred to different trucks at the border. The sea port in Riga offers another convenient route
for exports.
The new OSB line represents a major investment for Kronospan, with a new building being erected to house the line. The foundations and construction work were completed end-2006 and the installation of the line began soon after, in temperatures of minus 250C!
An old wet process hardboard line, an energy plant and a paper impregnation line were removed to make way for the new line and the entire project was still completed in a very impressive six months.
Dieffenbacher of Germany supplied the whole line from drying through resination, forming and pressing and supervised the building from log yard
to storage.
Project management, plant design, installation supervision and commissioning of the new line was the responsibility of Kronoplus Technical AG.
There are two strand dryers, both supplied by Schenkmann & Piel, a Dieffenbacher subsidiary.
The Dieffenbacher CPS continuous press is 53m long with a maximum effective width of 2.62m. Bolderaja’s standard board size is unusual for OSB at 1.25x2.5m, in thicknesses from 6
to 30mm.
The factory uses blenders supplied by Coil of the US.
“Our main focus is on OSB2 and 3 but we can make OSB4 if required – we have the certificates – but the market mainly demands OSB3,” said Mr Ritter.
Boards can be supplied tongued-and-grooved (T&G) on the edges in a Torwegge line and this is the only form of value-adding carried out on OSB.
The output of the Riga line is branded OSB Superfinish.
In fact this OSB line is more or less a carbon copy of Kronospan’s mill in Jihlava, Czech Republic – and it won’t be the last. Another identical line is under installation in Brasov, Romania and was due to start production in early 2009. Thus Kronospan has three new plants – Riga, Jihlava and the new plant under construction in Brasov, Romania – each with capacities of 500,000m3/year.
In common with other group factories, Kronospan says that these meet all current local and European emissions targets.
Coming back to value-adding, of course the particleboard line offers a lot more potential and Kronospan has grabbed it with both hands.
The Riga factory has three short-cycle press lines for melamine-facing its particleboard (MFC) and the decor paper is supplied by Kronospan’s own factories. Between them, the three lines have a capacity of 40,000m2/day of MFC. Decor papers are supplied by other Kronospan factories.
Kronospan Holdings’ expansion over the years has been relentless as the company has continued to invest in panel production and value-adding, acquiring
and upgrading some existing mills and building completely new ones on greenfield sites.
Whether bought or built, all these mills, sooner rather than later, fit the Kronospan philosophy of efficiency and required product quality standards.
Their locations are not randomly selected but carefully planned to target markets where there is both less competition and increasing demand for the
factories’ products. A look at a map of all the company’s mill locations worldwide amply illustrates that point.
Riga is particularly interesting in
having a particleboard multi-opening press line which is almost 40 years old and a state-of-the-art continuous OSB line on the same site.
However, both lines are run to maximum efficiency, both are attuned to clearly defined markets and both have a reliable and plentiful wood supply.
Perhaps that sums up the ‘secret’ of the Kronospan group’s success as the world’s biggest volume producer of panels, encompassing MDF, particleboard and OSB and a range of value-added products from MFC to laminate flooring.  n

My trip to South East Asia in late November/early December 2008 (see our Focus on SE Asia in this issue) turned out to be rather more ‘interesting’ than I had anticipated.

Broomfield, Colorado-based Casey Industrial has been contracted by Uniboard to serve as general contractor of its new MDF and HDF plant in Moncure, North Carolina. Uniboard is investing over US$140m in the Moncure plant to develop an integrated mega-site offering cost efficiencies and one-stop shopping for its customers.
The project represents Casey’s third major project for the Moncure facility. Cassey installed the original particleboard line in the 1970s and returned in the mid-1980s to install the MDF line. This new project will incorporate work-class MDF and HDF manufacturing technology.
“Very few panel industry capital projects are underway in North America. Casey Industrial is blessed to have won the Uniboard project,” said Tom Lepak, Casey Industrial’s vice president, business development.