The first article presented in WBPI about this Malaysian company appeared on page 12 of the October 1996 edition and bore the headline ‘Merbok: Making MDF in a hurry’.
It told how Robert Kokshoorn, Dutchborn managing director of Merbok MDF Sdn Bhd and his management team built two brand new continuous MDF lines in Merbok in the state of Kedah, in northern Peninsular Malaysia, within the space of two and a half years. The company went from nothing but a piece of land to a 250,000m3 a year capacity. It is still doing things quickly and
growing fast.
At the time of that first article, the company was part of the Merbok Hilir Group, a joint venture between a Japanese investor, Mr Hikozo Takeuchi, Robert Kokshoorn and a Malaysian entrepreneur.
Following a further management buy-in in 2000, the Merbok Hilir Group is currently a management-controlled company in which Mr Kokshoorn and Mr Richard Whitham, the Group’s operations director, are significant shareholders. Richard Whitham has been involved in the Merbok business almost since its inception.
The Merbok group now includes those two Siempelkamp continuous MDF lines at Merbok and one Mende and one Küsters continuous press at the Takeuchi MDF factory in the south of Peninsular Malaysia (acquired by Merbok Hilir in 1996 and the first MDF factory to use rubberwood as a raw material in the world). Those two Takeuchi lines have a combined capacity of 100,000m3 of MDF a year.
The company also has one MDF line in Sri Lanka, rated at 100,000m3 a year, and a second line was due to go into production there early this year to add a similar amount of capacity. That gives the Merbok group a total MDF capacity of around 540,000m3 and Mr Kokshoorn reckons that makes the group number two in capacity terms in the Asia-Pacific region.
However, raw MDF is not the whole story of Merbok by any means. It also has 18 million m2 of impregnation capacity on a Tocchio line at its Merbok factory, 160,000m3 (18mm basis) of laminating capacity and 15,000m3 a year (3mm basis) of paper overlaying. Also at the Merbok facility there is a polyurethane coated paper, tongued and grooved wall panelling production line with a capacity of 20,000m3 at full stretch.
Another home-built project was a resin production plant, capacity 50,000 tonnes per year, which came on stream at the end of 2001. This supplies all the Merbok factories in Malaysia and in Sri Lanka.
Until October 2002, the Merbok group was solely a producer of MDF panels, but that changed when it bought the assets of the Millplex particleboard mill, which had gone into receivership, and put it back into viable production, in a short space of time.
Millplex started up the line in April 1997 in Bukit Selambau, Malaysia. The Bison- Dieffenbacher line was purchased secondhand from war-torn Yugoslavia in 1995 by a joint venture Malaysian/Japanese company which refurbished it and added some new components. However, the line was never run successfully to its fullest capability and the then owning company went into a downward financial spiral and the mill was forced to close. By the time Merbok purchased the Millplex assets, the line had not run for at least eight months and its true state could only be guessed at.
Merbok was perhaps the ideal candidate to buy the company because it has built up a wealth of technical knowledge and in-house engineering capability during the development of its MDF business and has a team which you could say is ‘not easily deterred by a challenge’.
Refurbishment of the line started in November 2002. “The major job was the complete refurbishment of the Dieffenbacher single-daylight press,” recalls Mr Whitham. “We refurbished all the cylinders and the hydraulic system. It was a water/oil emulsion system with all the associated pumps, etc and we put in a complete new hydraulic system, incorporating distance control to replace the original manual spacer system. We also added a complete new user interface to meet the most modern standards of press control.”
All the engineering work was carried out by Merbok personnel, with the exception of the machining of the press cylinders, done by a specialist company in Australia. Surprisingly, only one new hydraulic pump was required to get the press running.
A complete new chip handling system, as well as all the equipment from the outfeed of the press to the infeed of the sanding line, and the stacking system, were engineered by Merbok’s in-house technicians.
Raw material for particleboard is mainly the same as for Merbok’s MDF – rubberwood – but this time with a little mixed hardwoods thrown in.
Primary chipping employs the Ferrari L13 drum chipper from the original line and chips are then carried on a new conveyor to a screening system, originally from Louisiana- Pacific in the US. Merbok also added a hogger for down-sizing oversize material.
The two primary flakers are from Klöckner and were also part of the old Millplex line. “They were a bit rusty but otherwise OK,” says Mr Whitham.
The Bison direct heat drum dryer had also survived in good condition and was fitted with new controls with real time graphics (RTG). After the dryer come two oscillating Texpan screens and two Pallmann PSKM refiners for surface layer material. A completely new cyclone and bag filter system was added to the line by Merbok’s engineers.
The original Imal glue system was retained, with UF and MUF blenders, but the glue kitchen area was upgraded with tiling and proper drainage.
The original forming was supplied by Bison and employs a three-head former with wind for the surface layers and mechanical forming for the core.
Merbok added a GreCon weight-perunit-area gauge at the former. The former is unusual, as it is a travelling unit which moves up and down the forming line on rails instead of a belt moving under the former. It seems a back-to-front way of doing things but it works, although Merbok’s engineers have put a lot of work into modifying it and getting it to run satisfactorily.
The line has a platen pre-press but it is not used because the new press controls enable the press to be closed gently enough to avoid the necessity, says Mr Whitham. It also avoids the problems of the mat sticking to the pre-press platens.
The Dieffenbacher single-opening press is 68ft long and 6ft wide and presented another problem when it was discovered the original foundations had subsided and the press had to be jacked up and additional reinforcement and concrete injected to underpin it.
The control room is also new, having been moved from a location beside the press to a more conventional elevated position at the side of the production hall. All the controls have been upgraded to the latest standards, with RTG displays.
“We split the press into four different zones to control the thickness more accurately with the hydraulic cylinders,” explains Mr Whitham. “The operator can vary the pressure and the distance control (panel thickness) along the length of the press to obtain a good surface and the required density profile; we have adapted the principle of a continuous press in a ‘homegrown’ system.”
The cut-to-size plant that came with the line was made in Japan many years ago and didn’t do the job any more. It was re-engineered and fitted with a PLC system.
There is a Steinemann six-head sander for finishing the panels and an automated, railed transfer truck stocking system. This stacking/storage system was another area where Merbok had to make some major changes to the original equipment.
“Originally the line used one metre high stacks of panels ex-press and this was a very inefficient use of storage space and led to poor stacking with bearers out of line,” says Mr Whitham. “We have modified it to build four-metre high stacks 6ft x 16ft with automated carriage to storage and to the sander. Building this put the full start-up back by two months because we had to dig 6.5m pits to accommodate four metre stacks in the floor, but it is essential for the efficiency of the whole factory.”
For value-adding, the factory has a Wemhöner short-cycle press, a single-daylight 6ft x 16ft unit. The company is aiming to surface 60% of its output, ultimately.
Panels are standard UF-bonded particleboard at present, but flooring grade, high density, high moisture resistant and edge-grooved panels (for loose tongues) are planned. The company bought a secondhand machine from the failed Masistar (formerly Vertex, formerly George Reynolds) plant in the UK to do the grooving.
Considering that the whole refurbishment and start-up of this particleboard line was carried out in five months from start to finish, it would seem that Merbok is still making panels ‘in a hurry’. Of course there are sound financial reasons for getting a new factory up and running as soon as possible and starting to get a return on the investment.
Mr Kokshoorn is aware that it would not be possible to build his factories at all, let alone quickly, if it were not for the expertise, skill, experience and dedication of his team. Most have been with the company since that first MDF line started up in Merbok in 1994.
Richard Whitham came from a practical background in the industry in Australia and has been responsible for the implementation of all Merbok’s plants, and its downstream and upstream projects, since 1995.
Merbok Particleboard was a new challenge for the company. Nobody had any previous experience of the product, admits Mr Kokshoorn. However, the basic competence was there among Merbok’s other managers and much of it is ‘transferable’ from MDF in terms of composite panel production.
Mr Geam Yong Kia is the plant’s operations manager. Lim Song Yoong is responsible for engineering, handling and mobile chipping technology, in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, as well as for equipment manufacturing for the group; he is based in Malaysia.
Some of the Millplex staff now work for Merbok and were able to share their past experiences of the line, which was of assistance in re-starting it.
The switch to particleboard seems to have been accomplished successfully, overcoming far more difficulties than the team expected in a used plant which they were not able to test-run before committing to it.
Mr Kokshoorn freely admits that, had the Millplex company not been located so close to Merbok, but instead was on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, for example, he would not have taken the project on. The logistics of controlling a completely new product line using old and ill-used machinery at that distance would not have made sense.
However, thanks to the skill of its engineering staff, Merbok now has a line that is refurbished to the company’s very high standards, and it is determined to make a success of the particleboard business, as it has of MDF.

Daiken Sarawak Sendirian Berhad (Sdn Bhd) started up the first MDF mill in Malaysia’s western Borneo state in 1996, partly in response to the environmental aspirations of the Sarawak State government, which wanted to reduce the rapid deterioration of its timber resources.
The Daiken factory, located in Bintulu, close to the South China Sea coast, was thus built to convert the residues from sawmills and plywood factories into high value MDF panels.
The company was incorporated in 1994 as a joint venture between Malaysian and Japanese investors and today 95% of its production is exported to Japan.
Having chosen a suitable site, at Kidurong Industrial Estate, and built the new factory, the first commercial production came in June 1996 and from this time on, the company has continually upgraded its products to meet international, and particularly the stringent Japanese, standards.
In March 1997 Daiken produced its first water resistant MDF, E2/M-Type, and two months later, it produced its first low formaldehyde board, E1/U-Type.
November 1997 saw the first delivery of water resistant, low formaldehyde MDF, E1/M-Type, and in April 1998, Daiken gained the big prize – E0 (‘E zero’) board.
But the company did not stop there. It went on to produce water resistant low formaldehyde high density board (HDF), E1/M-Type in September of that year and then European E1 low formaldehyde HDF in November.
The company has held ISO 9001 certification since January 1999.
Further developments in moisture resistant and low formaldehyde panels for flooring, doors and window frames followed over the next three years.
In January last year, Daiken produced F four-star U-Type MDF. Rated at F0.3 formaldehyde emission, this is produced in standard and moisture resistant grades.
Japan is well known as having some of the highest standards for its building products, and for its particularly tough formaldehyde limits. Few companies outside Japan can achieve the standards demanded, but Daiken gained the coveted Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) in March 2003 – the first Malaysian producer to do so.
“From July 1 last year all companies had to comply with the JIS in order to export to Japan,” said Anthony Chin, a section manager with Daiken. “It is difficult and expensive to get certification here. There are seven factories in Australia and New Zealand certified to JIS and just us in Malaysia.”
That Daiken is 70% owned by Japanese shareholders (Daiken Corporation 55%, Itochu Corporation 15%) perhaps accounts for its enthusiasm to meet those JIS standards. Daiken in Japan is one of the largest companies in the house interiors sector, supplying flooring, doors, windows and ceiling panels and the MDF supplied from Bintulu is used to manufacture mouldings, kitchen cabinets, laminate flooring and doors.
The raw material used in MDF manufacture is dipterocarp species such as meranti. Rubberwood, although a common source in Peninsular Malaysia, is not used by Daiken.
The company also has plantations of acacia mangium which should be ready to harvest in around five years. The plantation is in Similajau, 50km from Bintulu, and offers an area of 5,500ha of which about 500ha have been planted so far. The company is very particular about the trees it uses, requiring straight, not forked, trunks for maximum recovery. It thus uses a seedling supplier which has conducted extensive research into growing acacia mangium.
It is anticipated that the plantation will ultimately supply around 15-25% of Daiken’s raw material requirements.
Bintulu was chosen by the investors in Daiken because of its abundant supply of timber residues (all supplied debarked) and the presence of an established glue factory supplying veneer and plywood mills, which also had the facilities to meet Daiken’s high E0 resins standards. The MDF mill is also close to the port, with good infrastructure.
Logyard and chipping operations are on a separate site 15km from the MDF factory, at Kemena Industrial Estate. It employs Fuji Kogyo chippers.
The chip screening process is also at the Kemena facility and has recently been upgraded by Pal srl of Italy, including one of its Dynascreen systems for wet chips. Fines are used for fuel, with edge trim and sanding dust.
Chips from Kemena are stored under a roof in the yard, erected in late-2003, and then pushed into concrete pits with moving floors from which they drop onto a rubber conveyor belt with magnets above to extract ferrous material. Chip washing is by Metso equipment and the chips then pass to a screw drainer then a live bottom bin for pre-steaming. Waste water from the drainer goes to a sludge pit and filter press. The fibres continue to the digester and on to the Sunds M48 refiner, which is expandable to 54in.
Gluing is the unique feature of the Daiken factory and the key to its Super E0 achievement. The company uses pMDI resin for which it built its own system and the resin is injected into the blowline.
A two-stage Metso dryer is followed by a new discharge weighing conveyor from Binos of Germany and a spike roll separates any lumps and sifts the fibre. A relay cyclone feeds fibre to either buffer stock or the Metso vacuum Pendistor forming line. The Pendistor has three vacuum boxes under a single-head former. The weigh scale and pre-press are both also by Metso.
Another new feature on the line is an Electronic Wood Systems (EWS) density profile gauge which precedes a length conveyor allowing room for a pre-heater, which the company is considering for the future.
A Weko water spray for the mat surface precedes the Dieffenbacher CPS continuous press which is 20.6m long and 3m wide, equipped with a Sandvik 2.3mm thick belt. Fumes are extracted directly from the press. The master board is 2.81m wide and 5.6m long in thicknesses from 2.5mm to 21mm.
The flying cut-off saw is by Metso, as is the single star cooler.
A Lukki fully-automated panel handling system with a 3,000m3 capacity holds the stock for conditioning before sanding in a Steinemann eight-head line. The cut-to-size section is again from Metso; it must handle over 200 cut sizes for the Japanese market. There is a semi-automatic packing line.
Daiken’s development of its range of specialist boards in low formaldehyde and moisture resistant forms has been the result of its in-house research and development department, producing products to suit the requirements of end-users and taking care of quality control throughout the factory.
“We are pretty adventurous in what we do and in meeting new requirements while running the equipment at the maximum throughput,” said Mr Chin. “We were prepared for the new Japanese standard and were ready for that July 1 deadline last year.
A lot of other Malaysian companies are only just looking at it.”
The Daiken MDF production line has a rated capacity of 105,000m3 a year but the company is aiming for at least 107,000m3.
Unfortunately it had a setback to that last April when a fire broke out in the press.
“Luckily we had Firefly protection throughout the factory and that saved us from serious damage. The fire happened at 7.15 on a Sunday evening but our people are trained for instant action and the fire was quickly put out.We only lost two weeks’ production,” said the section manager.
As for the future, Daiken plans to increase its output over the next two years to around 120,000m3. “One main area we are looking at is the energy plant, together with emissions and water treatment, drying and forming,” he said. “We are also looking at modifications to the press, but not at an extension, and at increasing the capacity of the Lukki system. We would also need more warehouse space.”
The company has installed a small machining centre to check out the possibility of making door stiles and rails as components out of MDF. It is also making agathis solid core panels faced and framed with MDF and already has a small market for this.
“Although MDF prices are under some pressure, the F four-star requirement has helped to keep the price of our products up,” said Mr Chin. “However, it is slower to make, so some of the premium goes in production costs but we have a niche market – rubberwood MDF can’t compete in our niche.”

German company GreCon says that often questions like “What is bond quality?” and “Is there a correlation between bond quality and internal bond?” are asked.
While appreciating that a wood based panel manufacturer does not want to sell bond quality as such, but panels of an adequate quality, GreCon claims that its UPU 3000 helps to achieve that goal by monitoring the bond quality in the panels as they are produced.
As a specialist in on-the-line measuring technology for wood based panels, GreCon has already offered earlier generations of the Ultrasonic Camera UPU 3000 and blow detection systems UPU 919 and UPU 2000.
The target of the new UPU 3000 was to reveal hidden optimisation potential and offer more than a simple blow detection system.
Thus the company says that with the new UPU 3000, the range between a simple blister/ no blister, or good/bad, statement is broken down. Now the question it is designed to answer is “how good?” or “how bad?”
However, GreCon suggests that the real question is what these statements actually refer to. It is not the panel quality as such, because, due to physics, some important quality parameters such as internal bond and expansion cannot be determined online – at least not yet.
But GreCon says that the ultrasound measuring method does allow the measurement of other features. The number and size of glue bridges as well as their degree of hardening, for example, have an important effect on both the panel quality and the ultrasound signal.
The higher the number of glue bridges and the bigger their extent, the better the ultrasound signal can penetrate the panel – and vice versa. A similar behaviour applies to the hardening of the glue: the harder the glue, the easier the ultrasound can penetrate the panel.
To describe these correlations, the term ‘bond quality’ was chosen.
This behaviour was already used for blow-detection systems, but their configurations were not able to resolve and display the processes within the panel. The information from these systems may be considered digital – a ‘good/bad’ statement on quality control.
Automatic calibration and dirt accumulation control are used to ensure consistent and reliable measuring results, despite high temperatures and high amounts of dust in the measuring position, says GreCon.
The bond quality is graphically represented by the system, with a true resolution of up to 250 values in their allocated colours.
Due to its varied configuration possibilities, the UPU 3000 can be adapted to different panel parameters and, importantly, tothe customer’s requirements. It has a high a resolution and can display the full range of a ‘too good’ and an ‘extremely bad’ bond quality.
GreCon says a clear and simple representation of the bond quality and its trend is shown by a quality indicator. All measured data is compressed in a graph, which indicates the quality on a scale, similar to a speedometer.
The UPU 3000 can detect blisters and automatically sort out panels, like its predecessor, the UPU 2000 system, but it is also said to be a reliable aid to optimising the production process and increasing productivity.
Changes in the bond quality caused, for example, by changes in the press factor, panel moisture, share of glue, or the glue quality are immediately shown by a change in colour.
The UPU 3000 can be used for changes in the process, such as prolongation of the press or change from wet to dry gluing. Due to the continuous monitoring of the panel bond quality, the time required for start-up is reduced and GreCon says that a pay-off time of only six months is possible.

Founded in 1908 in Finland, Raute has always specialised in the peeling of logs to produce veneer, originally for the plywood industry. Over the years, that business has become more challenging as peeler log resources have become both more scarce and more expensive.
Having a Finnish background has, no doubt, helped Raute as the company has had to grapple with the problems of peeling one of the most difficult species – birch. The often small and irregularly-shaped logs, coupled with their small diameter and therefore whippy nature, has required the development of some very specific technologies.
The company has also supplied all the production lines for producing spruce veneer in Finland – an industry which has grown dramatically in more recent times.
But Raute is not just a Finnish company today. It has subsidiaries in Canada, the US, Germany, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Russia and Chile, so is familiar with a wide variety of raw material, both hardwood and softwood.
In other parts of the world than Finland, Raute has adapted its knowledge of peeling technology to such species as fir and pine in North America, tropical hardwood species in Asia and radiata pine in Australasia.
The company is also no longer just concerned with the production of plywood. The growth of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) as a construction product has also presented opportunities for it to expand its customer base. In fact it supplied the first eight-foot wide line to Finnforest’s Punkharju mill in 2001 and this is also capable of laying up some veneers with the grain at right angles to the main axis to produce a large size, plywood-like, panel with various applications.
The company has always had to concentrate on maximising the recovery of veneer from each log and its latest innovation in block optimisation is the SMART-SCAN XY+ system. This offers features such as 3-D block imaging and auto-calibration and Raute says it can be retrofitted to all existing lathes.
Raute claims the system is unique in that it utilises data from thousands of measuring points to create a true 3-D image of the block. This data is then used to optimise peeling in several ways.
Firstly, it can determine the largest cylinder within the block that will produce the greatest yield and it does this by using its 3-D imagery to undertake virtual peeling of each block, once every revolution of the spindles.
The company claims that recovery improvements of 0.4 to 3.0% have been achieved on a variety of wood species in this way and that the greater the variation from a true cylinder, the greater the benefits of SMART-SCAN XY+.
The second way in which the system operates is by optimising the position of the block relative to the point of contact with the knife. It does this by optimising the path of the knife during peeling, as well as the point at which the knife contacts the block at the start of the peeling cycle, in order to ensure that round-up waste is kept to a minimum. Surface defects on a block, such as knots, can cause spin-out and this is where the third optimisation feature comes in. The new Raute system is claimed to reduce this risk by accurately identifying such surface defects.
Smart Scan takes measurements in 1in (25mm) increments along the entire length of the block, identifying surface defects, such as those protruding knots. The operator only needs to monitor the process, as the carriage can be operated in fully-automatic mode.
As a result, the distance the carriage has to travel between peeling cycles can be reduced, says the company, and the knife carriage can be positioned as close as possible to the surface of the incoming block, taking into consideration protruding knots and butt flare. This means that cycle times can be reduced at the same time as reducing the risk of those spin-outs.
Unlike conventional X-Y systems, the line does not need to be stopped when calibrating SMART-SCAN, says Raute. This optional feature is claimed to reduce down time, save raw material and eliminate calibration errors.
The system has what Raute calls an advanced user interface which enables the block to be viewed as a picture image, grid, or geometric shape. In every case, a true 3-D image of the block is generated and can be stored in the computer’s memory. The system is also network-ready, making it accessible for remote diagnostics, reporting and servicing.
SMART-SCAN can be retrofitted to all existing lathe models and Raute arranges with a mill to have a representative travel to the site to determine the scope of the retro-fit required. Typically, it would involve the relevant controls, touchscreen, mounting hardware, multi-point laser sensors, temposonic probes and spindles.
This new scanning system follows fast on the heels of Raute’s Smart-Peel concept, formally launched at the Ligna exhibition in Hannover, Germany, last May.
Raute says the system was another product that was developed in response to the industry’s need to maximise value from its raw materials, regardless of wood species, block diameter or capacity requirements. It claims that flexibility is the key element here.
It incorporates the latest developments including the new optimal peeling geometry, digital knife carriage feed and what Raute claims is “the most rigid and accurate gap adjustment method yet designed”.
Of course the plywood industry is regarded as being at the ‘mature’ end of its product life cycle and has seen its market attacked first by particleboard, hardboard, then MDF, and in the construction and packaging sector by OSB.
However, there remain many applications where only plywood will do, whether for reasons of stability and thickness swell, strength-to-weight ratio, or pure aesthetics. It is said that the Egyptians invented plywood and it is showing little sign of disappearing from the specifiers’ portfolios.
But it has had to adapt to continually changing demands made on it and not least of these has been competitive pressure – price. Product costs have had to be reduced in the face of rising raw material costs, which means increases in efficiency have become a lot more than a luxury – they are a means of survival. Thus companies like Raute have had to find ways to maximise the returns from logs.
A new lease of life has been given to the technology used in plywood production by the advent of LVL. That product, made in a very similar way to plywood, has been relatively slow to gain market acceptance but that is changing. The quality demands that such a sophisticated engineering product as LVL makes on its manufacturers should help to ensure that veneer production technology remains at the ‘cutting edge’.

It was always the dream of Mr Tenson Yoong to establish an integrated wood processing complex on his 20ha site in Gemas in the south of Peninsular Malaysia.
He started that process with the construction of a 120,000m3 a year particleboard factory which went into production on that site in 1996.
The botanical name for rubberwood is hevea brasiliensis and so Mr Yoong called his industrial estate HeveaWood Industrial Park and his particleboard factory HeveaBoard.
Dreams don’t always translate into reality quite as you hope or expect but Mr Yoong’s dream of a successful downstream processing operation to utilise the particleboard products certainly came true. It just didn’t happen on the HeveaWood site.
The result is HeveaPac, a flat-pack readyto-assemble (RTA) furniture factory established in late 2000 and put into production in 2001. At first, the company leased a site in Seremban, not far from Gemas, with an old disused particleboard factory providing the accommodation.
The property has since been bought by the company and HeveaPac Sdn Bhd has mushroomed in terms of turnover. In 2001, the company turned over around eight million ringgit (RM). In 2002, this soared to RM35m (US$9.2m) and in August 2003, it hit RM7.1m in the one month and a year-to- date total in excess of RM40m. Now that sounds like a dream come true.
Heveapac consumes about one third of the production of HeveaBoard and buys in thin MDF, from local suppliers such as Segamat Panelboard, for cabinet backs and drawer bottoms. Meanwhile, HeveaBoard has been concentrating on higher grade particleboard products and has successfully produced an E0 board, and a Super E0 board, employing pMDI polyurethane binders in the core and E0 urea formaldehyde in the surface layers.
In June last year, the company achieved the coveted Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) for F Four Star (F****) Super E0 board and received its first major order from a Japanese company for delivery to Taiwan. Prior to that, orders were also received from the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia, where the ultimate customer was a Japanese company in each case.
HeveaBoard claims to be the pioneer of commercial production of E0 and Super E0 board in Malaysia, using pMDI resin, and this production accounts for around 10-15% of the company’s current output.
“We are promoting these products and see the percentage of our production in these grades increasing in the future,” said Mr Yoong.
“The turning point for HeveaPac came in March 2002,” he said. “We received a major order from a US company. It was a turning point for HeveaPac in fulfilling a substantial order with just-in-time deliveries. We have not looked back since and now have major well-known international retailers as customers in the UK, continental Europe and the US, as well as here in Malaysia.
“We have a large customer base and that allows us to invest in more equipment. At first, we had too few customers accounting for too much of our turnover, but that is not a problem now. Heveapac was a challenging venture but it paid off.”
The factory stands on a 10-acre site, with 300,000ft2 of undercover production area. It is equipped with a selection of local, Taiwanese, German and Italian machinery, suited to different-size production runs. All the furniture is flat-pack and the company has a standard range of about 300 models and also makes to customer requirements.
The US customers buy about 10 models in volume and HeveaPac ships about 50 or 60 containers a month to that market alone, out of a total shipment of around 200 containers a month to all markets.
“What we offer is ‘affordable’ furniture,” said Mr Yoong. “Most customers buy it at the supermarket on impulse, take it home and assemble it and the next day they come back for another piece.”
HeveaPac employs senior staff with experience of the market such as Mr Peh Ju Chai, executive director responsible for the company’s sales and marketing, who has been in the business for 10 years.
Mr Yee Kong Yin is general manager of the company and brings years of experience in the speaker cabinet making industry. He was able to design the production line from scratch to operate in the most efficient way.
“We will continue to diversify in terms of products, possibly using different surfacing materials,” said Mr Yee. “For instance, we went from coated paper to PVC. We also use some solid wood components and may increase this content.
“Our base product is particleboard but we have incorporated other products in our designs and will continue to do so.”
For designing the new furniture ranges, HeveaPac employs eight experienced autoCAD designers and 10 sample makers. There is a separate area in the factory dedicated to the making of prototypes, such as hollow core panels for light weight, with particleboard frames and thin MDF faces.
The company offers a prototype service within 24 hours with a sample being air-freighted to the client, or digital pictures sent, for evaluation.
The nine packing lines at the factory can pack the furniture in the customers’ own packaging, made locally, and bar code it with a stock reference if required.
Port Klang is not far away and provides a good facility for exports. For local markets, HeveaPac has a fleet of 10 covered, five-tonne trucks, mainly for delivery to customers in the Klang Valley.
The paper foil lamination line applies PvaC glue by roller and woodgrain foils generally have a weight of 30g/m2, while for lighter coloured/plain papers, 40-45g/m2 is the norm. For applications such as TV stands, a PVC foil is often used.
As for cutting the panels to size, no expense is spared in terms of machinery, explained Mr Yoong, because square, straight edges are vital. Seven Holzma panel sizing saws are used 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure they pay their way.
“The selection of equipment is very important for us,” said the managing director. “A local firm engineered some machines for drilling and boring for fastenings for small sizes at high volume, but for larger panel sizes, and for versatility, we use the Homag NBT 100 to carry out accurate horizontal drilling.” The factory has two Homag double-end tenoners to trim panels after pressing, while for routing, it has a mixture of Chung Kung, Weeke and Busellato CNC machines.
“Our success is based on our software, the consistent quality of our particleboard, just-in-time delivery and charging a ‘reasonable’ price, which allows me some profit,” concluded the managing director.
It seems that in the end, his dream did indeed come true.

Evergreen Fibreboard Sdn Bhd found itself virtually forced into making MDF when it ran into difficulties sourcing enough thin plywood for its veneering operations which supplied the furniture market.
At first the company bought in thin MDF from other local manufacturers, but as market demand for that panel mushroomed, supplies of MDF became difficult.
Thus it was that, in 1993, Evergreen built a Mende thin board line in a new factory in Parit Raja in Johor state.
This was followed by a second MDF line, this time based on a Dieffenbacher CPS continuous press, in 2000.
This line had originally been scheduled for start-up in 1995, but the plans were put back to 1997. Then chief executive J C Kuo saw the economic problems on the horizon and put the date back again to 1999. This is an example of the prudence with which he has pushed his family business forward over the last 10 years or so.
However, a really major step for the company came two years prior to that second line when, in 1998, Evergreen Fibreboard set up its first knock-down (KD) furniture manufacturing operation, in Parit Raja.
Since WBPI last visited the company in late 1999, it has been transformed under the guidance of J C Kuo. “Over the last four years we have bought out five neighbouring companys’ sites,” he said. “We have used one for a warehouse for raw MDF board, one for a back-up logyard, one for furniture production facilities, one for a warehouse for finished furniture and the fifth is a small factory to be used as our furniture parts store.”
That all adds up to approximately 30 acres of land on six sites – in 2000 the company owned 12.5 acres.
Add to that the fact that Evergreen produced its first panel from its first particleboard line, in Segamat, in May 2003, and the rapid growth of the company is clearly illustrated. In total, the group now comprises two MDF lines, a particleboard line, a lot of KD furniture production and two veneering works in Pasir Gudang in Johor.
“We needed vertical integration, and to minimise costs in every product, and we needed to be big enough too – size does matter in this business. The value-added downstream production was vital as well,” said the 40-year old chief executive.
Mr Kuo feels the company occupies an important niche by being both an MDF and particleboard producer, especially as he sees particleboard as being currently under-supplied in Malaysia. “We can also offer both particleboard and MDF laminated, printed, veneered, whatever is required,” he added.
“Furniture production was getting more and more important for us and we needed the particleboard capacity. It also sells to the same customers as MDF and so there are no additional sales costs.”
Because Mr Kuo, in common with other panel producers in the country, sees potential limitations in the supply of its principle raw material, rubberwood, he sees another advantage for the move into particleboard.
“The raw material is easier to source from sawmill waste from a number of local mills and we can use rubberwood, or mixed tropical hardwoods if necessary.”
The major components of the Bison-designed particleboard line were bought secondhand through Modul Systeme of Germany, coming from a company in Latvia, Ventspils Koks, which had gone into bankruptcy. The purchase included the dryer, forming line and press line and Mr Kuo went to Latvia himself to supervise dismantling.
Some other components came from the former SEP mill in Italy and some new parts were added.
Providing a link to the parent company, Evergreen Fibreboard, and an individual identity for the new venture, the particleboard factory is known as Allgreen.
The line has a capacity of 420m3 a day, or around 110,000m3 a year. It can produce particleboard 9mm to 30mm thick, although it is currently producing 12mm to 18mm.
Klöckner chippers and Pallmann knife-ring flakers and refiners prepare the chips, while a Pallmann hammermill was added to the equipment in September 2003.
Wet and dry chip screening were supplied new by Pal of Italy, together with surface and core layer sifter. These latter systems are vertical sifters, the first of their kind in Malaysia, and are intended to give a good laminating surface to the particleboard for furniture production.
Forming employs the original static three-head Bison unit, with wind-forming for the surface and mechanical forming for the core. Drying is carried out in a 16 tonne per hour drum, while energy is provided by a Konus system with a Körting dust burner.
The Dieffenbacher press is a two-opening model, 8ft x 42ft. “We refer to it as a ‘twin single-opening’ press,” explained Mr Kuo. “It has four hot platens which gives us better thickness control than a conventional two-daylight press, because we can have different temperatures in the two openings if we want to – that is why it is like two single-opening presses.”
The line has an eight-foot wide Steinemann six-head sander, also bought secondhand.
All machinery installations for the MDF lines, the new particleboard line and the furniture factory are carried out by Evergreen’s own staff, giving the company a cost saving, claimed Mr Kuo.
The Parit Raja complex is the location of a new, three-storey office block, built in 2002 and providing head office facilities for all production plants and the group’s sales operations. Only two floors are currently in full use, so there is still room for expansion here.
The control systems for the panel lines were being upgraded at the time of my visit to enable the chief executive to monitor and control them from the office, or from his home, two hours’ drive away in Singapore.
My tour of the furniture production facilities took place in a golf car – there was a lot of ground to cover in a short time.
The factories offer direct printing, paper lamination, veneer lamination with UV lacquer line, low pressure melamine and PVC foil application.
“We can match the colour and pattern between all the different surfaces we offer and carry out PVC wrapping on a post-forming machine,” said Mr Kuo. “Whatever the customer wants, we can do.”
For the real wood veneered panels, there are three slicers and one rotary lathe, which are in addition to the four rotary and eight slicing machines at Pasir Gudang.
The knock-down, or flat-pack, furniture goes to markets as diverse as Japan, Singapore, Australia and, more recently, the US, as well as to the domestic market. Some hypermarkets in Spain, the UK and France are also customers. The warehouse has 28 loading bays for direct forklift loading of 40ft containers, all under the watchful eye of video surveillance cameras. The factory turns round 25 to 30 containers a day here.
The site at Parit Raja employs 1,100 staff, but the company employs 2,000 in total. “Furniture production is very labour intensive,” said Mr Kuo.
It seems superfluous to ask him if his plans include further expansion of the Evergreen empire. “We are planning investment in MDF in Thailand because I feel the raw material supply is a limiting factor in further expansion in board production in Malaysia,” said the chief executive. “The biggest problem for the business in Parit Raja has been finding space – we have grown so fast.
“It has taken 10 years to get where we are, step-by-step, and suddenly you realize how big you are.”

Before embarking on its new venture in the production of LVL, Nelson Pine Industries Ltd sent radiata pine peeler logs to Japan for peeling and structural property evaluation to determine the suitability of this species for LVL production.
The company identified three key markets for its LVL. Australasia was the first, but as it is comparatively small and has two other large LVL plants already supplying the market, the larger consumers – Japan and the US – were the next two obvious destinations.
Each market requires different product certification: in the Australasian markets, it is AS/NZS 4357, while in Japan it is JAS 1443 and in the US, ASTM D5456. The testing regimes for each standard differ slightly and separate certification is required for each.
In order to gain certification for the three key LVL markets, Nelson Pine became an associate of the Plywood Association of Australasia (PAA), through which it has so far gained certification for the products sold into the Australasian market.
The PAA has worked closely with the Japanese MAFF during the recent changes to the JAS (Japanese Agricultural Standard) laws.
This has enabled the PAA to certify its members for production to JAS standards once all the required criteria have been met.
The PAA is also working with a US certification agency for the US market, using the testing and auditing systems that PAA already has in place with its members.
Having made the decision to make LVL, machinery suppliers were selected.
Raute of Finland supplied the peeling line, complete with veneer stackers, incorporating moisture grading to complement the log preparation section which includes ring debarker, cut-to-length saw and hot water cooking vats.
The LVL plant itself was contracted to Dieffenbacher of Germany and incorporates veneer scarfing and lay-up by Corvallis Tool Company (CTC) of the US and a 45m continuous press with microwave pre-heating.
LVL billets are produced in 1,250mm widths, thicknesses of 12mm to 120mm, and lengths up to 18m.
The Nelson Pine veneer production line was commissioned in September 2002, five months ahead of the LVL production line, with the stepped start-up providing a more even workload for the construction and installation workforce and early cash flow from veneer sales to local and international markets.
The veneer and LVL lines are on separate parts of the site. The veneer line positioning ties in with pre-existing log handling facilities, while chip from green veneer waste and peeler cores can go to the MDF line.
The LVL line, on the opposite side of the site, is right beside the Dynea resin plant, which makes the majority of the adhesives used in the production of Nelson Pine LVL and GoldenEdge MDF.
Selected logs are debarked using a Nicholson 35in A5 Tandem ring, prior to cross-cutting with a bank of five chain saws. The resultant blocks go to collection bins, from which they are transferred to the conditioning vats by overhead gantry cranes.
The blocks are cooked in water for 16-24 hours at 850C to raise their core temperature to a minimum of 550C to improve veneer peel quality while prolonging knife life.
The lathe is a 9ft Raute with laser-controlled XY charger, three-stage chuck, roller nose bar, and power back-up rolls. It is capable of peeling veneer between 2mm and 4.5mm at up to 365m/minute.
The veneer is clipped to width using a Raute rotary clipper controlled by camera scanner. The clipped sheets are automatically graded and stacked by moisture content, measured by a Raute RMS 3000 meter.
The three moisture grades from the green stackers are accumulated for separate drier runs. Reducing the variability of veneer entering the drier by moisture segregation assists in reducing the variability of the dried veneer.
A steam-heated, 50m, six-deck, three-lane veneer dryer was supplied by Babcock BSH, now Grenzebach BSH. It has automated infeed and pack accumulator. The dryer’s length is divided into three temperature-controlled stages and a six metre cooling section, and incorporates an automatic grading and sorting system.
The veneer is dried to a target moisture content of 6%. Another feature of the dryer is that all exhaust gases are ducted to the 20MW energy plant supplied by Easteel of New Zealand. This technique completely eliminates blue haze exhaust from the dryer in the atmosphere.
An Elliot Bay moisture meter and in-house software is used to monitor drier performance and a running tally keeps the operators aware of the re-dry rate. The feed speed of the drier is adjusted if this rate moves outside operating limits.
Additionally, each veneer sheet can be tracked to its deck and lane position in the drier, and a cross-sectional picture built up on the positions in the drier which are being overor under-dried. This information is used in tuning the drier, through jet box modifications by Grenzebach technicians.
The dry veneer sheets are transferred automatically to an automated grading line consisting of a Metriguard 2800 DME ultrasonic stiffness grader, a Babcock Novascan 4000 line camera scanner and an Elliot Bay Cypress 2000 dry chain moisture meter.
The addition of a Metriguard to the grading line was a first for Babcock, but the three components have been integrated successfully. Veneer is automatically machine-graded by a combination of structural and visual characteristics, plus moisture content.
Six structural classes are defined within the Metriguard 2800 DME, based on any combination of modulus of elasticity, ultrasonic propagation time, specific gravity, moisture and width.
Six visual classes are defined within the Novascan computer. Twelve defect types exist, and a visual grade consists of minimum and maximum limits for width, length, area and number for each of these 12 defect types.
The Elliot Bay moisture meter is set up with four moisture classes.
The Novascan holds an eight-grade matrix containing the simultaneous requirement of structural, visual and moisture classes necessary to meet a veneer grade. Six of the eight grades are the user-defined visual grades, one grade is re-dry and the last grade is ‘everything else’.
Using the ability of the Metriguard to spray-mark defined grades, it is also possible to amalgamate two structural grades that have the same visual requirement onto a single stacker. The resultant pack is then segregated later into marked and unmarked sheets.
The graded veneer is automatically stacked on one of nine Babcock stacking tables for the eight grades, plus one floating spare stacker.
The veneer is transferred to the LVL plant, accumulated by grade, then all LVL veneer is scarfed using a CTC scarfer with skew correction and two-bin stacker.
The appropriate grades of scarfed veneer are then placed onto each of 10 CTC veneer feeder line stations according to the grading and the recipe being run. Half the veneer packs are turned over using a CTC pack rotator so that the finished LVL product has alternate tight and loose veneer orientations to assist product stability.
The veneer passes through an Elliot Bay Cross Tipple moisture meter which gives the opportunity to reject overly wet veneer and feeds moisture trends to the press control room so the operators can make adjustments to press or glue-spread parameters if required.
A Koch 1400mm curtain coater is used to coat the sheets with Ready to Use (RTU) Phenol Formaldehyde (PF) adhesive. The RTU is made at Dynea’s neighbouring plant.
The glue-coated veneer continues down the transport conveyor to the Dieffenbacher/CTC automated dual level lay-up station.
Veneers are arranged with the stiffest structural grade on the outside of the lay-up, and the least stiff veneers in the core. Either two or three structural grades will be placed in a structural LVL lay-up.
The laid up veneer billet is then continuously transferred to the press via a 300kW, 924MHz microwave that pre-heats the veneers prior to entry into the continuous press.
The 46.2m Dieffenbacher CPS 150 press has 30 pressure and three heat zones. At the end of the press, the billet passes through an EWS Ultra-Scan ultrasonic 12-head blow detector.
The LVL billet is edge-trimmed to 1258mm wide, which later cools to 1250mm.
The billets are cut in nominated lengths between 6m and 18m with the flying cutoff saw, identified with a traceable pack number and left to cure for a minimum of 24 hours before running on the billet processing line.
Each pack has at least one laboratory sample cut from it during the production process to check bond quality and structural performance and full records are kept.
The packs have an initial quality inspection in the lay-down area where they are checked for over-lap or related quality issues. Once cured these are de-stacked into single billets and cut to length on a Dieffenbacher saw, when any ‘blown’ sections of billet can be rejected.
During the finishing process billets can be sanded using a Steinemann four-head widebelt sander. They then pass through a Paul rip saw which rips them into widths between 90mm and 1230mm.
From log to finished LVL pack, Nelson Pine has quality control measures to ensure greater process efficiency, reduced waste and a better product. Combining this with the comprehensive automated veneer grading system to select the optimal veneers for each product means that Nelson Pine LVL is fast gaining a marketplace reputation for superior product presentation and quality.

A new Malaysian MDF producer hit the market on April 2, 2003 when Segamat Panel Boards produced its first panel within eight months of breaking ground.
Neither the people nor the machinery were new to the game, which helped to ensure a rapid start-up of the mill on a greenfield site in Segamat, Johor. The mill is owned by the Takeuchi family of Japan.
Mr Hikozo Takeuchi built his first MDF mill in Malaysia, not far away from Segamat, in Masai in Johor, in 1989. It was a Mende line, which he moved from Japan where he had used it to make thin particleboard.
He is said to have pioneered the use of rubberwood for MDF production in Malaysia with this line and, in 1993, he teamed up with two men – a Malaysian entrepreneur and Dutchman Robert Kokshoorn – to form Merbok Hilir.
That company went on to build two continuous MDF lines in Merbok in the north, among other projects in Malaysia and Sri Lanka.
The Takeuchi family later divested its interests In Merbok Hilir and for a time was out of the panel business in Malaysia; an absence partly necessitated by the unfortunate serious illness of Hikozo Takeuchi.
But that was not the end of the story for them. Prior to Mr Takeuchi’s illness, he had bought another secondhand Mende line in Siberia and had it dismantled and put in storage.
In 2002, Mr Takeuchi’s son, Shigetoyo, who took control of the company following his father’s illness, decided to do something with that dormant line and a site was found in Segamat, an area rich in rubber wood.
The first of hundreds of piles in this soft-ground area was driven on the Greenfield site in August 2002.
The Takeuchi family are not the only highly experienced people involved in this project. They needed to find a man who understood Mende lines thoroughly and could put one together in such record time.
The choice was probably not that difficult – there are not too many people around who fit that kind of profile. Enter Peter Fitch.
Mr Fitch, an Englishman, returned from running a project in China in May 2002 just in time to start work on the preparations for Segamat.
He had been putting together another Mende MDF line, this time for Plantation Timber Products (PTP) at its factory in Hubei.
Prior to going to China, Mr Fitch ran the Takeuchi Mende MDF line in Johor for Merbok, so he knows a bit about this kind of line, and about Takeuchi.
He had an experienced team, including Koichi Saito and Peter David, both of whom had also once worked at Takeuchi. Mr Sakakibara, who was also involved in the Takeuchi startup in Johor, offered an experienced guiding hand. The line was originally supplied new to Russia by Bison as a turnkey installation in 1988/9, but only ran for about four months before being shut down, apparently due to a lack of raw material. In 2000, Kazo Trading, a company owned by Takeuchi, bought the line from refiner onwards.
Mr Sakakibara and Mr Saito went to Russia to supervise dismantling with a Russian contractor.
Originally, the line was to be rebuilt in China, together with a sawmill to provide the raw materials, but Mr Takeuchi senior’s illness unfortunately intervened.
Once his son had decided to build in Segamat, Peter Fitch took charge as project manager for both civil works and machinery installation on the 18-acre site on a former oil palm plantation.
“Not only was this factory built in record time, but it was also built on a very small budget,” says Mr Fitch. “We spent less than RM50m [US$13.2m] and there was no bank loan involved as it was all internally financed by the Takeuchi Group, which has sawmilling interests in Japan and the US and knock-down furniture manufacturing in Johor, Thailand and Japan, as well as joint venture interests in Taiwan and China.”
The equipment that came from Russia included a Pallmann 42/44in refiner, a flashtube dryer, Bison vacuum former, deMets pre-press and of course the Mende press.
The press has a three metre-diameter drum that is eight feet wide and has a nominal production capacity of 4,000m3 a month.
However, Mr Fitch is already advanced with plans to increase this to 5- 6,000m3 a month (60-70,000m3 a year) in a couple of years, by incremental changes to the production process.
A Segamat Panel Board-made debarker, and a secondhand Klöckner chipper purchased through Italian company Imal, are additions to the purchased line, and the moving floors in the chip silos came new from another Italian company, Trasmec.
There is a Schwabedissen swing saw, which cuts in both directions, to cross-cut the board as it exits the press, while cutting the panel to size is carried out by a system designed and manufactured in-house by SPB. Before the swing saw are hogging saws for edge trim and up to three longitudinal cuts can also be made in the width of the board.
A steam heat exchanger for the tube drier was fabricated locally in Malaysia as the factory has quite a high steam capacity, explains Mr Fitch.
An Imal glue kitchen was added and Imal also upgraded the electronics from their 1988 vintage to current standards, with PLC and SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition).
The resin used is urea formaldehyde, producing approximately equal quantities of E2 and E1 grade board. The company can also produce E0 board for the Japanese market, employing formaldehyde catchers.
Imal also supplied thickness gauges after the press and a density analyser on the forming line.
A Weko system is used to spray the mat surface before pressing.
The original Kikukawa sanders have only three heads for top sanding. An additional two sander units were purchased from the same supplier to sand the back of the panel and were delivered at the end of 2003.
The control room for the whole factory is equipped with the latest production monitoring equipment, with the supervisory control for forming and pressing at one end, with RTG; and the green end, refiner, dryer and glue kitchen controls at the other.
Thicknesses produced on the Segamat line range from 2.2mm to 6mm maximum, but the company specialises in the 2.2mm to 3mm range. Density is 750-780kg/m3.
For value-adding, the factory has a paper overlay laminating line from Taiwan using UF or PVA resin lamination to apply printed paper supplied by Takeuchi sister company UC Gravure Sdn Bhd in Johor.
“We aim to put around 25% of our production through the laminating line for the local and export market,” explains Mr Fitch.
The company is well-placed for export, being equidistant between the three ports of Tanjung Pelapas, Pasir Gudang and Klang.
The whole company is run by a total of 120 staff – small numbers by South East Asian standards.
Production is housed in a light and airy building which makes maximum use of available daylight.
It also allows room for a second line and extra value-adding equipment when the time is right – as does the whole site, with spare land at the back of the factory available for development.
“The advantages which we have at SPB are the fast start-up and the very low capital cost internally financed by Takeuchi, as well as keeping our manufacturing costs low – and the fact that we make an added value, niche product,” says Mr Fitch.
“We believe in total service satisfaction and, as a small company with a very small capacity compared to most, we need to compete on quality and service as we do not have the economies of scale to compete on price alone.”