In a linked chain of events, plunging pulp chip prices have made possible increasing veneer raw material supplies for Potlatch, Inc in Oregon and Idaho.
The output of the company’s fast-growing hybrid poplar plantations has been favourably tested for veneer production, but some problems such as transportation distances have so far sidetracked that use.
The 17,000 acres of trees blanketing a flat semi-desert area of north central Oregon seemingly sprang up overnight, to the puzzlement of freeway drivers who buzz by. They’ve been managed as an agricultural crop since the first plantings in 1993.
“We’ll be producing 45 million board feet per year in sawlog volume and it’s all  contiguous,” predicted harvesting and marketing manager Pat Moore.
Regional hybrid poplar manager Greg Uhlorn explained the plantations’ origin: “We were concerned about our ability to supply chips for our pulp mill in Lewiston, Idaho.We looked at several alternatives and this looked like the best option. In 1993 we bought two large circle-irrigated farms and started converting them to drip irrigation for growing trees.We planted our first trees in 1994, looking for a six- or seven-year rotation for pulp chips.”
The growing environment on the planting site was good, lacking only water which was readily available from the large Columbia river five miles north. The potato farmers who formerly owned the land had developed circular pivoting irrigation systems.
The sandy soil is good. A freeway runs along one edge of the farm, a railroad mainline across it and there is that nearby Columbia river for barge transportation.
The problem was that the pulp chip market, in Mr Uhlorf’s words, “really turned on its ear after about the mid ’90s”. Today’s chip prices are less than half of what they were when the project started. This made the cost of producing the poplar chips uneconomical for pulp, and required rethinking the poplar management.
This prompted the decision to look at solid wood production and Potlatch began pruning to gain more clear wood which has a much higher value. They went from a seven-year to an 11-year cutting rotation and started planting just under 300 trees per acre, half the density of the pulpwood plantings. The utilisation target is hardwood lumber and plywood.
First prunings are restrained, only four or five feet, so as not to remove too many leaves  which are important to growth. The trees are 10ft to 12ft high at the end of the first growing season. After two years they are 20ft to 30ft tall with pruning up to 9ft. Final pruning is 20 to 24ft and the fully-pruned trees will grow another five or six years before harvesting.
Potlatch is using traditional tree breeding, picking the best specimens, with no genetic work. It is looking for such things as fairly straight stems and branching perpendicular to the stems which will create smaller knots than angle-branching.
Most of the work is contracted including tree improvement in nurseries, cutting  production for tree starts, logging and hauling. Plantings are entirely from cuttings roughly 13in long, 1/2in at the small end and 5/8in at the large end. Planters slip the cuttings into the prepared planting bed, in rows, with the top bud at ground level. Rows are 10ft apart and cuttings placed every 15ft.
The 3/4in plastic drip irrigation hose is laid down beside the cuttings with computer controlled irrigation starting in April, when the trees leaf out, and continuing until they start shutting down in September and October. Only eight inches or less of rain falls during the growing season. In the first year the new trees receive 6in to 10in of irrigation water, but older trees receive 40in to 42in.
Chemicals and fertiliser are injected into the water to combat tree diseases and insects and to speed growth. Weed killers limit vegetation harbouring animals and birds that can cause damage.
When Potlatch set up its farm it replaced the irrigation circle centre pivots with valve manifolds. It used as much of the existing buried pipe as possible, burying some additional PVC lines to supply the drip tubes.
The figures for the system are impressive. Pump capacity is 178,640 gallons per minute. There are 370 miles of buried pipe, from the 72in pipe under the freeway to the 11/2in pipe supplying the drip tubes. There are 14,300 miles of plastic drip tubing on the ground and 20 million emitters to supply water to about 7.4 million trees.
Mr Uhlorn said: “We’re looking at appearance-grade applications where structural strength is not critical. Our poplar is a good lightweight low density wood, light in colour. It machines, stains and paints well. This is the first hardwood plantation operation to be FSC certified.”
Harvesting units are blocks of 40 to 160 acres. Logging contractor Bryan Broadfoot uses a Timbco feller-buncher running a Quadco disc hot saw, moving across the field taking four rows at a time, cutting at ground level. He sorts as he goes, segregating trees which could produce solid wood. Earlier, when logging was only for pulp chips, he used a shear but this damages the butt log for solid wood production.
Another trailer-equipped Timbco picks up and hauls loads of 120 trees on a hayrack trailer to a roadside, returning with an empty one for the next load. These loads are entire trees, including limbs and leaves. A fifth wheel truck takes the trailers to a central processing site in the middle of the farm. Here, a Lako Oy dangler processor cuts solid wood logs to length. Because of the poplar’s natural crook and sweep, shorter bucking lengths dramatically increase utilisation.
There are two sorts for solid wood and the rest goes into a Peterson 5000 chain flail for chipping. The product is trucked to the port for barge shipment or directly to market.
Everything is utilised. Bark, limbs and tops are ground at the site in a Morbark tub grinder. Much of this is hauled back to the field as ground cover and nutrient base with the rest shipped to a nearby dairy in exchange for compost to apply to the fields. A Merry Crusher grinds up material on the logging blocks, preparing it for the next crop.
A Fuji King debarker will be on site soon, as the operation moves into full manufacturing. A 4ft lathe is a possibility. An option for enhancing the wood would be pressure-treating it with Indurite to increase hardness.
Mr Uhlorn said that at this point before the pruned material starts moving, veneer production would have to be dedicated to core inner ply. Later there will be opportunities for higher grades and face stock.
Jeld-Wen is incorporating the chips in its MDF doorskin production at White Swan, Washington. Mr Uhlorn believes the poplar would be good OSB material. Potlatch has run trials in its Minnesota OSB mills. Sawlogs go to Kinzua Resources sawmill at Pilot Rock, Oregon.
Mr Moore lists some plusses for the operation: “Our inventory is kept on the stump; we have a year-round operation so we have even flow and accessibility of product and even flow for shipment; and we’re accessible to interstate highways.”
He advised a maximum of three days from the stump, chipper, or mill for best recovery.
The tree wagons are unloaded with a Wagner loader and are either set down directly in front of the chipper or onto a small deck with the solid wood logs segregated from chip logs. A Link-Belt loads the hog, mounted on a Ford truck.
Greg Cooperrider, Potlatch’s plywood plant manager at St Maries, Idaho is enthusiastic about the material. He peeled eight truckloads of 7in to 10in, 17ft logs. “We conditioned them for 12 hours, but if they were fresh we could probably run them without conditioning,” he said. One problem was the stringy, cedar-like bark.
He said it should be dried on a mild schedule to minimise splits and it requires slightly more glue than some other species.
Using 1/6in veneer, he laid it up into fiveply panels. “It would make a very nice substrate for overlays,” he declared.

A veneer plant, opened 40 years ago in White City, Oregon, has been owned by Boise since 1976. Five years ago a fire levelled its sister plant in nearby Medford and this prompted re-tooling and a big jump forward.
Disaster was to strike again when a forest fire in August 2002 singed 9,000 acres of company-owned forest and called for quick action to beat the bugs to the wood. The fire started on US Forest Service land, but quickly spread to Boise land. Plant superintendent Dave Anderson said: “We started logging that same week, before the ashes were cold.We have been peeling those logs since the fire.” At the time of WBPI’s visit in mid-August, he thought the salvageable logs would all be peeled by the month’s end.
Some of the company’s young plantations, established after harvesting, burned too, with nothing left to salvage.
Despite that quick action, Boise lost some wood. “We didn’t see much early deterioration, other than logs were a bit dry throughout the winter,” Mr Anderson said. “This spring the bugs started coming out and the worms started getting in there.We even have some stain in the Douglas fir.” Normally, blue stain deterioration is seen in pine; there was little pine in the salvaged stand.
The US Forest Service fought a half-million acre fire nearby at the same time. Hamstrung by preservationists’ opposition to timber harvesting, they have yet to recover the burned forest’s value and prevent complete loss. Several Oregon State University forestry professors studied the problem and called for immediate action.
The Forest Service had produced a plan with alternatives ranging up to 450 million board feet of salvage while the forestry professors advocated salvaging up to 2.5 billion board feet. That much of the fire area is in a federally designated wilderness area, where road building and other activities are off limits, complicates the matter further.
In any case, work would not begin until next summer, after bugs and fungi have had more than a full year to build their numbers.
All of Boise’s logging is contracted, with logs delivered to the logyard where LeTourneau and Caterpillar 950 and 956 front-end loaders handle them. The Cats offload debarkers, stack on the ground, fill and unload vats and feed the lathe decks. A new 4ft lathe and another converted to high speed triggered an extra debarker shift. The logs are sprinkled to prevent deterioration.
A typical log mix was to be seen in July when there was 78% Douglas fir, 10% white fir and 10% pine. Most of the pine is ponderosa with a small amount of lodgepole. Monthly veneer production in two ninehour shifts is about 24 million ft2, 3/8in basis.
“We’ve been peeling the fire logs as fast as possible, usually within a week of their arrival at the mill,” Mr Anderson said.
The company’s adjacent sawmill handles debarking and bucking with a Salem 65in rosserhead and Kochum Cambio 30in ring barker. Earlier, the veneer plant could handle blocks as large as 80in in diameter but, at the time of the revamp following the plymill fire, they decided that 45in would be the maximum.
Highest recovery is necessary with contemporary high wood costs. On the 4ft line, they can peel down to a 21/8in core.
They sort for diameters at the debarker. Seven inches and under usually goes to the 4ft lathe. The debarkers remove any charred wood on the fire-killed logs.
The bucked blocks are forklifted to the 14 steam vats that have been converted to hot water at around 155°F. Mr Anderson said: “Steam sort of dries your blocks. Water seems to soften them and does a more even job of heating them. It’s quicker, too.We reached the point where we couldn’t get our logs hot in the winter.”
He said in summer they run pine off the ground ‘cold’. “It might be 100°F outside, so it’s really not cold. If you get a block too hot, it gets soft and will spin out on you.”
The mill runs two shifts totalling 16,000 to 18,000 blocks daily, including the 4ft lathe. Most of the lathe work has been by Coe Manufacturing.
Coe converted a Premier lathe. All Coe x-y systems and chargers are installed. The two 8ft lathes are powered by 450hp and the core lathe is 160hp. Elite controls are on the ‘A’ lathe with Raute on the other two.
The mill has clipping trash gates on the 4ft and ‘A’ lathes. These save time – 0.7 to 0.8 second, “And help you gain constant thickness, too, from not going in and out of your peel,” said Mr Anderson. Lathe cycle times are as short as four seconds. The computer follows everything with cycles timed to fractions of seconds. Milliseconds, when added together, can result in savings.
Mr Anderson said: “Sometimes you might not be able to identify a problem. With this data, you might find the charger coming in a little bit slow or the core drive coming in slow, or chucks not retracting quickly enough.”
Plant management has weekly maintenance meetings to find such solutions.
When planning the mill revamp following the plywood fire and the decision to consolidate veneer production at White City, they discussed the merits of two- versus threetray installations for the core lathe. They built so that adding a third tray would be fairly simple, but found that two trays were sufficient. A Lloyd Controls following system works well.
The trays are generally long enough to handle the blocks assigned, but if a ribbon is too long, the clipper takes over the lathe speed. Veneer is never broken at the lathe.
The core lathe speed is about 1,000fpm while trays unload at the clipper speed of about 500fpm.With the clipping trash gate, very little material goes to the hog. Nearly all goes to the clipper.
Boise crews built the core line tray system followed by a Raute three-bin stacker. One chain puller works at the end while four chain pullers work on the two 8ft lines.
There are Elite controls for the ‘A’ lathe and clipper and rotary clipper with Ventek scanners on all three lathes.
Boise doesn’t clip just 27in and 54in, but includes random widths up to 33in. That means an additional 6in of wood recovered than if a 27in had been clipped. Normally that would have gone over the end of the chain. This recovery benefit is gained by the fact that the green end’s customer is the company’s own plywood mill, with its composer handling random widths.
An important market is Boise’s LVL mill just a half-mile away.
As with most mills, safety is an important consideration. This mill has a better record than most, in fact 1,682 days without a lost-time accident at the time of WBPI’s visit. Everyone participates in safety, watching out for each other in the mill. This extends to project work.

Clarke’s Sheet Metal has seen some big changes in its 50 year history. It is located in Eugene, Oregon, once the heart of the state’s wood manufacturing industry where it could serve adjoining mills virtually out of the back door.
For Clarke’s it has been a matter of imaginative engineering, construction and sales efforts that have extended well beyond its backyard – far overseas in fact. And the company established a new operation in the US south to get closer to the important southern forest industry.
Current president W James Clarke recalls just coming out of war time service in Korea in 1952 when he, his father, Ralph H Clarke, and mother, Belle C Clarke, established the company. It began with fans and blowpipes, later moving into high pressure blowpipes, cyclones, truck bins and many other mill components.
Mr Clarke said the firm’s early business was primarily industrial sheet metal, but shortly became specialised to include pneumatic conveying systems for the wood products industry. These systems typically included a fan and ductwork to collect and transport wood waste from process equipment to a cyclone receiver. As customers’ needs expanded, Clarke’s developed a complete line of metering and storage bins and expanded its products for pneumatic conveying systems to include dust filters and associated explosion safety devices.
Clarke’s first started manufacturing doffing and picker roll bins in 1981 and has nearly 100 of them operating in the US, Europe and Asia. Technical advances have reduced maintenance and increased life. 
Clarke’s developed its heavy duty Flo- Matic bin for storing and discharging hard to- handle materials such as hog fuel. A top conveyor distributes the full length, utilizing total bin capacity. A traversing discharge auger provides a controlled material flow out of the bin where it is transferred on to an accumulation conveyor. 
Clarke’s primary and secondary Pneu- Aire filters collect dust on the inside of bags, where it is removed by a reverse air purge system. Each of the filter bags is isolated from the incoming air stream. The purge air pulls dust from inside the bags. The positive cleaning action allows the dust and cleaning air to move in the same direction. 
With the addition of dust filters to Clarke’s product line, the need for explosion safety devices emerged. The fine collected wood dust can be quite explosive and the smallest spark can ignite it. The PyroGuard spark detection and extinguishing system detects and extinguishes sparks before they have a chance to enter dust collectors or storage bins. Other mechanical devices such as Hi Speed abort gates, back draft dampers and explosion vents are typically incorporated into the pneumatic systems. When applied properly, these devices greatly reduce the potential of an explosion. If an explosion takes place within the pneumatic system, the activation of these safety devices will minimise the damage caused to the overall system. 
Clarke’s early experience in the wood products industry paved the way for its involvement in many particleboard, MDF and OSB facilities in the US and overseas. The firm provided doffing roll metering bins and pneumatic conveying systems at Fuzhou Man Made Board Plant in Fuzhou, China. All the pneumatic conveying and filtration systems for the Medite MDF facility in Clonmel, Ireland followed. 
Mr Clarke recalls one particularly challenging project in Alaska when he moved a big 70ft waste burner up from California. The job was almost completed when a strong windstorm reaching 147 miles per hour hit the area. Burner parts were scattered along the beach for 11/2 miles. After moving the parts back to the site and bringing in new steel they got the burner ready to raise and waited for two days of foggy calm weather to finish the job.
As Clarke’s customer base grew so did its manufacturing facility. The current office and fabrication facility in Eugene, Oregon, has 45,000ft2 of fabrication area along with a 3,600ft2 machine shop and a 2,500 ft2 electronics laboratory.
Primary equipment includes a 14ftx30ft CNC plasma burning centre, 10ft-wide plate rolls and two press brakes, the largest 20ft long with a 350 ton capacity.
The machine shop is equipped with a CNC milling machine, and a CNC horizontal boring mill as well as multiple lathes used in the fabricating of Model ER and CFV machined rotary airlock/feeders. The electronics laboratory assembles and repairs the spark detection/extinguishing systems.
In 1983, Clarke’s bought a stand-alone manufacturing facility in Shreveport, Louisiana to more economically service southern US customers. This facility has 57,000ft2 of fabrication area and utilizes fabrication equipment similar to the Eugene plant. It does not have a machine shop. The work area is ideal for fabrication and final assembly of large components, such as the metering bins. Pre-assembly and delivery to the job site in the largest pieces, feasible for shipping, can greatly cut installation time.
Recent projects have included supplying six picker roll metering bins for the new J M Huber OSB facility being built in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, and two wet picker roll metering bins and two rotary drum screens for the Langboard OSB facility in Quitman, Georgia. In the late 1990’s, Clarke’s delivered this same type of equipment, bins and screens, to Kronopol OSB facilities in Poland, France and Germany. The equipment was manufactured at both of Clarke’s facilities. For the overseas projects the equipment was shipped via container and delivered to European ports.
The management of Clarke’s Sheet Metal, Inc is made up of W James Clarke as president, Mike Eide, vice president of manufacturing, and Andy Clarke, vice president, sales and engineering.

In hindsight, Masisa SA could not have picked a worse moment in late 2001 to start up a second MDF production line of 120,000m3/year in Argentina.
The Chilean panel maker originally launched its Valmet thin MDF continuous line to serve the local markets of Argentina and its Mercosur free trade partners, Paraguay, Uruguay and Brazil. But, with recessionary Argentina plunging headlong into its worst ever political and economic crisis, and panel over-supply and political uncertainty dogging the Brazilian market, Masisa Argentina SA was forced to rely heavily on exports further afield.
“The national economy just stopped. We had to make a lot of effort to continue working at the Concordia plant and needed to make more effort to export,” recalled Masisa Argentina’s managing director Jaime Valenzuela.
Devaluation of the Argentine peso, the fall of the government and bank closures devastated the domestic economy. Construction halted and, in 2002, the bottom dropped out of the wood panel market leaving MDF capacity of 550,000m3/yr chasing a tiny home market of barely 60,000m3/yr, confirmed Mr Valenzuela.
Masisa’s Argentine subsidiary operates a major panels complex at Concordia. In 1995, it launched its first MDF line, a 120,000m3/yr Sunds/Dieffenbacher continuous line, now with a 150,000m3/yr capacity. Apart from that, the site runs a 160,000m3/yr single-opening Bison press particleboard line, along with a 25,000m3/yr thin board Mende line.
In the months since the Argentine crisis hit, Buenos Aires-based Masisa Argentina has seen its business turned upside down. From a pre-crisis trade balance of 30% export to 70% domestic sales, it can hardly sell 30% at home today, with the rest disposed of at low prices as far afield as Asia, the US and Europe.
Problems in South America’s ‘southern cone’ nations have been compounded by the lingering world recession and global uncertainty in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Margins were slashed as the company’s Concordia mill continued to pump out both MDF and particleboard. Government export incentives have been cancelled out by high freight costs and escalating customs tariffs. “As you know, this [panels] is a commodity and it is not easy to sell abroad – especially particleboard. It’s not common to export particleboard and often we had to export without margins, only to continue working at the mill,” admitted the managing director speaking in Buenos Aires earlier this year.
Masisa Argentina was forced to reorganise its operations and cut costs, which included lowering the pay bill. This took the form of axing some of its top managers: higher paid Chilean staff and skilled technicians.
Faced with low demand, shrinking margins and ever tighter competition at home and abroad, the panel manufacturer has had to come to terms with its competitors rather than enter a fruitless price war.
“In the end, you try to survive. You try to compete, but we are not being stupid. If you try to get their [other players’] business and [to] lower prices, they are only going to do the same to you,” said Mr Valenzuela.
His company has not only had to reach a truce with its traditional opponents, but faces the prospect of new pressure with the arrival of a powerful new player.
Last July, Chilean forest products giant Arauco launched its 250,000m3/yr MDF plant in northern Argentina and is now deciding whether to install a second line at the Puerto Piray site.
Masisa Argentina saw the culmination of its US$28m MDF II expansion project in November 2001, when the new Metso-supplied thin board unit, with a 2.6m wide Küsters continuous press, started up.
While its arrival came at a tough time in market terms, it also introduced an attractive new product to the producer’s portfolio. Thin MDF in a 2.5mm to 9mm range, has proved a good export product and, in March, the line was nearing full production.
“Thin MDF has a good market. It was a good idea to focus on that product. The line is running at about 8,000m3/month right now and we want to run it at full capacity,” confirmed Martin Buffa, head of the Concordia mill’s melamine lamination section.
Prior to the launch of MDF II, the first line was increasingly turning out thin board, which represented around a third of its annual production in the year before the new line came on stream.
Furnish for the new line, now dedicated to thin MDF, is a mix of ‘elliottii’ pine and eucalypt, the latter used more than in raw material for thicker board manufactured on MDF I at Concordia. While the use of eucalypt tends to darken the board finish, it also represents a solid saving in wood cost.
Concordia’s MDF I line, which produces the thicker range of pine based board, maintained full production throughout last year, despite the lingering crisis. The two lines consume around 190,000 tonnes of wood a year, much of it brought by rail from northern Argentina’s Corrientes province, up to 400km away.
Masisa recognises the way forward must involve adding value to its commodity products. It has reacted quickly to the tough market conditions with several new projects to increase the value of its end products.
In its latest move, the firm entered the lucrative MDF mouldings business in January 2003, adding a 3,800m3/month mouldings plant. It is equipped with a ripsaw, two Weining moulding machines, two paint lines and a packaging unit, and uses 9mm to 13mm board from MDF I.
The mouldings plant is labour intensive and already has a team of 50 manning two shifts to meet growing demand, in particular, from export business in the US.
“Three months after starting up the plant, we have begun exporting and the lines have been very successful. Output has reached 2,000m3/month. In September, we expect to be at full capacity,” enthused Mr Valenzuela.
Masisa Argentina can turn out a range of some 40 mouldings for floors, doors, ceilings and furniture with its new plant, which will require four shifts when running fully.
“The US mouldings market is growing well. At the moment, we have no problem in putting our product in the market there,” added Mr Buffa. Around 90% of the mouldings is destined for the US. There is room for expansion beyond current capacity should demand require it, according to Mr Buffa.
The Concordia site is already equipped with two Wemhöner low pressure melamine laminating lines and a double Vits overlay paper impregnation line. In December 2001, Masisa Argentina launched a new 50,000m3/yr Barberan finish foil unit. Prior to its arrival, Masisa produced finish foil panels using a melamine press line. The new addition has helped to save production costs, explained Mr Buffa.
But, today, demand for laminated board is still limited to Argentina and its Mercosur neighbours. At the end of March this year, the melamine lines were operating at around half their 200,000m3/yr capacity, more than 60% of that covering particleboard. The finish foil line is used to cover mainly thin panels from the Mende particleboard line (4mm) and a small amount (3mm) from the MDF II line. To date, demand has limited production to around a quarter of capacity.
The Concordia plant supplies the Brazilian market with some of the line’s output via local offshoot Masisa do Brasil SA. It produces MDF and OSB panels, but has no finish foil facility.
It is clear that Masisa Argentina will need to invest further as it grows its business and develops more value added projects at Concordia. But the Masisa group has entered a phase of consolidation and cost saving. Since it was acquired from its owner, Inversiones Pathfinder Chile SA, by the leading Chilean forestry company Forestal Terranova in July 2002, its operations have come under the financial microscope.
Nowhere has the new owner’s scrutiny been more intense than over Masisa Argentina, which accounted for a large slice of Pathfinder’s regional investment in recent years. Now, it feels, it is payback time.
“Masisa came to Argentina 10 years ago with an objective of investing US$35m here. In the event, we have invested more than US$300m. But now it is very difficult to say to shareholders: ‘Invest here!’ Nobody’s going to put money here if they do not see changes,” admitted Mr Valenzuela. The new mouldings line represents the final investment agreed for Concordia by Pathfinder.
What is clear is that the new owners want to see decreasing costs, a halt to losses, and some return on Masisa’s huge investments in Argentina. There are signs of recovery there, particularly since May when a new president took over in Argentina. Demand has improved and prices have stabilised somewhat, but Masisa still forecasts tough times ahead for a year or so.

Recent technology has improved the guard around the heart of the line – the press – in the panel industry, an industry which requires cost-effective and flexible production for high capacities.
Metro MDF is the market leader in Thailand with an annual production around 210,000m3, representing 25% of MDF produced in Thailand. In the year 2000 the company became one of the first MDF mills in Asia to install a new press guard system from the Swedish company, Firefly.
“It must be said, even in front of the supplier,” states Mr Piya Piyasombatkul, president of the Metro Group, “that I would recommend any wood working factory not to save money on this type of equipment. I will install a press guard system in all presses we have. It should be an industry standard.”
Metro MDF is part of the Metro Group with facilities in and around Bangkok. The mill is located in Karnchanaburi, some 100km west of Bangkok. “The business started about 50 years ago with a teak sawmill,” says Mr Piya. “ My father then set up the first privately owned plywood factory in Thailand, in Nonthaburi; at that time outside Bangkok, now in greater Bangkok.”
“Right from the beginning we specialized in thin board products. Then some 15 years back it started to become hard for new logging concessions of teak and raw material became quite expensive. We had to rethink and back in 1990 we went into the fibre-board business, acquiring a wet hardboard line from Skinnskatteberg in Sweden, and this became my first job for the family.”
“That situation pushed us to the limit of survival, we were forced to learn fast, to maximise production and quality and maintain good machinery,” continues Mr Piya. “We did everything to sell, in thickness and sizes, but it was hard just to sell raw MDF board. A good decision was then to go into value added products, which resulted in a new company, Metro Panel, where we utilise some 25% of our MDF production to make veneered and overlaid panels, doors and door skins. Our market is outside Thailand to some 70% with customers for raw board and value-added products – the last group to be found in Europe and the United States.
“Our philosophy is conservative and that goes for everything we are doing. This means we will be sure before we invest, we would really like to know what we are doing. Buying a big package from one single supplier is ok as long as you are within their business area. But in order to be better and learn fast you have to buy directly from those with great experience within a certain area. For instance, in the first MDF line, the detection and extinguishing equipment were included in the main supplier package. We later learnt, via direct contact with the sub-supplier of the fire protection system, that their knowledge and experience could help us improve both safety and productivity,” continues Mr Piya.
“I have also learnt that expanding is the only way to survive and when Thailand in 1997 devalued its currency, we were quick to decide on a second MDF line. So, in the middle of a big crisis, we made a tough decision and it was a really good decision. This second line has a continuous Contipress from Metso, designed for high speed and thin boards. Until then, when we were in the buying stage, the fastest presses were running at 60m/min, but we were aiming at 72m/min and we have actually been running at 84m/min. It was quite an interesting project, but I think now we have pushed the press to its limits.”
Well-known risks
Everybody in the panel industry knows that fires and fire risks are part of the game and a matter of great concern. There are several places along an MDF line where something can happen and the worst scenario is a fire in the press itself.
To obtain a required safety level, it is of utmost importance to conduct a customized risk analysis. Important parameters to consider are press type, manufacturer, press speed, age of press, location of frames and valves, cabling, type of products produced, cleanliness procedures etc.
The mill people contribute their knowledge and experience from production and, as a result, a customised design is proposed where each detector and water nozzle are laid out in the right position, giving just the amount of equipment needed.
Flame and hot body detection are the two most important areas to cover in and around the press. By using a two-channel UV/IR (ultra violet/infra red) OAD (open area detector) detector, flames around and in the press will effectively be discovered. The combination of UV and IR will also make the detector very fast and, importantly, less sensitive to other energy sources.
Combined with IR hot body detectors in extraction ducts from the press, and temperature detectors, the overall detection will be further improved in order to give as early a warning of a fire as possible.
Harmless water mist
Conventional sprinklers used on a press fire often cause other problems: A flood of cold water and hot steel do not go well together and the amount of water can also create electrical problems, a time consuming clean-up and a possible mill shut-down.
“Today such a situation would be devastating”, explains Mr Piya. “If you are away from the market a couple of months or so, then you are lost for ever.”
By using water mist with a well tuned customised droplet size, it is possible to avoid damaging the press and still extinguish the fire or stop it from spreading.
Such an automatic system will also make the operators feel more secure and able to manually activate it if needed.
The combination of a very rapid detection and extinguishing, released in less than a second, is the key to smooth and continuous operation.
Improved uptime
“I think they have a good concept,” says Mr Piya. “It is simple, while other suppliers have much more equipment, making, among other things, maintenance much more complicated. The system concept controls the fire and is built up in such a way that the operators are not afraid of releasing the system – and this is important,” he says.
“If I compare with before these installations of press guard systems in line 1 and 2, the operators themselves had to decide which and what equipment to use and while deciding, the fire expanded.
“Another aspect in favour of this system is the risk analysis performed prior to installation, giving as result the amount of equipment needed, in the right positions – we don’t over-invest. It is also a main reason behind our ability to increase press speed and production and still feel safe.”
Following a fire in a filter after the sifter back in 1997, Metro had its first contacts with Firefly. After installing their press guard system on line 1 in year 2000, Metro has now also installed the system in line 2 after a careful and joint investigation as part of their risk analysis. Firefly also supplied the remaining fire detecting and extinguishing equipment in line 2.

In 1952 the English-based company, Bartrev, developed a continuous press with rotating hot platens, of which seven were manufactured in all. This concept failed to become a commercial success, however, because the excessive technical complexity involved was not offset by any improvement in board tolerances over that possible with cycle presses. Furthermore, the market was not ready at the time for a fundamentally new type of press technology.
Some 20 years later, Bison built a continuous press for its own particleboard production based on the same principle of the rotating hot platen. This concept was not a commercial success either, for the same basic reasons.
An improved concept involving the use of roller chains was then developed in 1975/76 by Küsters. For the first time a concept was presented which led to improved board tolerances and finally attracted interest from industry. Even so, there were still problems and interruptions to production, this time because of the complex chain system, although these problems have long been resolved.
Siempelkamp contends that it was not until the development of its rotating rod system in 1982 that a high level of operational reliability was finally guaranteed and the real breakthrough came for the continuous press process – in the form of the company’s ContiRoll System®.
Today, the continuous manufacturing process is the undisputed leader in terms of technological development. And now, as ever, it continues to find new areas of application, while existing processes are continually improved and refined.
Important examples of such innovations include continuous OSB production, which Siempelkamp was the first to master (the first plants were delivered to Kronopol and Huber in 1996), the production of thin MDF (the first Siempelkamp plant was delivered to Homanit, Herzberg, in 1991) and the production of very light MDF insulation panels on continuous presses. In the case of thin MDF in particular, Siempelkamp has put in a considerable amount of development work in order to achieve surfaces suitable for lacquering without the need for prior sanding.
For the future, a still higher feeding rate, combined with a further shortening of heating cycles, is an important development goal for continuous presses.
The permanent trend towards ever shorter heating times is made possible by advances in press technology, heating technology and, increasingly, gluing technology.
For some time now there has been a trend towards longer and, to some extent, wider presses. The reason for this is that operators wish to achieve maximum production outputs in return for minimum fixed costs.
As part of this development Siempelkamp has delivered a press over 60m long for an OSB line in North America. Plants of this size can achieve daily production volumes of over 2,000m3, at a good level of availability. A question often asked, therefore, is whether we can expect to see 70 or 80m long presses in the near future.
As far Siempelkamp is concerned, we actually expect to see a reverse in the trend. Tomorrow’s presses are going to have to be faster, but also simpler and shorter, in order to offer better value for money.
This will be achieved through greater use of pre-heating systems which will take a considerable load off the press itself. Their use results in shorter heating times and better product quality.
Plastification of the mat leads to lower press pressures, less plant wear and adapted press structures. The first successful preheating system, the ContiTherm, was developed by Siempelkamp in 1999 for OSB production and is now available for MDF presses as well.
Gluing technology
Another major stimulus for improvements in productivity is provided by gluing technology. Traditionally, this has received little attention compared to that lavished on the spectacular advances in press construction. Here, too, we expect things to change in future.
This will be made possible by developments both on the glue/resin side and the glue spreading side. The tailoring of resins to different wood based panels is getting better all the time. Diverse glue manufacturers are working intensively on the production of faster resins. And resin spreading systems themselves have also been improved (for instance by Imal), resulting in reduced glue consumption.
The common objective of all these developments is the optimisation of gluing technology for high productivity through reduced glue consumption, optimised glue distribution and ultra-short setting times.
An important additional requirement is compliance with stricter environment-related regulations in relation to the production and use of wood based panels. Siempelkamp’s engineers are optimistic that they can master these complex technological requirements.
Trends in plant design:
In recent years, after a phase of consolidation, the major producers of wood based panels have built up large panel centres (socalled mega-sites).We expect this to continue.
This kind of strategy offers a range of advantages for plant operators, but also for plant manufacturers and panel buyers.
In our view, there are advantages for plant suppliers as well as plant operators to be gained from being able to design individual plants for a tightly defined range of products. This is simpler for both sides, and for the plant operator it is much more productive.
The long-standing practice of trying to produce many products from a family of products on a single plant inevitably leads to compromises. Moreover, frequent product changeovers result in unnecessary losses, and a very high level of investment is required in finishing equipment.
A good example is the successful strategy pursued for MDF laminate flooring plants. In these plants, the entire production process – from gluing to pressing, finishing, lamination and packaging – can be optimised for a single product.
Therefore, a successful strategy for the future has to be to set up more of these wood based panel centres, preferably linked to major sawmills. Other specialized lines can also be integrated at any time in addition to the standard equipment, ie particleboard, OSB and MDF plants. They can include, for instance, the flooring lines just mentioned, or exclusive lines for thin board, insulation board or PSL beams (boards made of long chips, lengthwise oriented).
The logistical advantages of such concepts are enormous. Thanks to the diversity of products it is possible to completely utilise all the different raw materials.Works management, maintenance, stocks of replacement parts and sales can all be centralized and therefore cost much less.
The advantage for the buyer of wood based materials is that all product ranges are available at short notice. This means that small quantities can be produced and dispatched cost-effectively as job orders.
In the near future we shall see major advances in productivity resulting from the combination of state-of-the-art press systems and improvements in technology. Supplemented by modern logistics systems, which embrace the entire value-added chain from raw material to distribution, the production of wood based materials in a continuous process will continue to successfully dominate its market.
Longer term we anticipate the introduction of new technologies and products based on existing processes.
Composite materials provide just one example. Wood-plastic composites achieved a dominant market position in motor vehicle accessories a few years ago, and there is no doubt that similar composite materials can establish themselves in the market for wood based panels and related areas. This development has already begun in the production of mouldings.
The chances of continuous panel production being substituted by alternative technologies do not appear remotely realistic in the foreseeable future. At Siempelkamp, we see ourselves confirmed in this belief by the optimised technology of our processes and by the high return on investment and availability offered by our plants as a whole.

Five years ago a hangover spark from an earlier dryer fire kindled flames that raced through Boise-Cascade’s plywood plant in Medford, Oregon.
On the last day of operations before a 1998 holiday shutdown, a pitch fire behind the cooling section in the mill’s number two dryer broke out. The sprinkler heads quenched the flames, but just 20 minutes before the mill closed a spark in the rafters flared up again and flashed into dust. It was like dynamite detonating.
The fire exploded over to lay-up, down to the finish end and ran the length of the long crane shed. Fire crews focused on saving the power house but they lost the entire plywood plant and the planer mill.
Shift supervisor Phil Brown, an employee here since 1965 recalls the event: “I came from home and helped move veneer and vehicles away from the building. We couldn’t move fast enough. We saved maybe a third of the veneer. We had so much veneer stacked in the crane shed. It was a half mile long and the roof fell in 15 minutes.”
The mill is located on a large 124 acre site. With the ruins still smoking, management debated the future. They finally decided to rebuild, but only a high production four-press dry end. The salvageable veneer equipment would go to Boise’s green end at White City, six miles away. The Medford mill would import veneer from the company’s four veneer plants in the area.
The first panel in the ‘new’ mill came out of the press just one year later – the mill was essentially the same, except for the green end.
Mr Brown said: “During the rebuild, supervisors chased down different things. Two others and I helped put the glue loft together. A lot of our own people put the spread line back together. Many people were involved in the project.”
In some ways the fire was positive in that past experience could work into the new layout. Much of the existing equipment was salvaged. “We were able to design the plant so that when trucks pull in with veneer we have a steady process forward so that nothing moves backward. I think we dropped eight Hyster forklifts, just by everything running consistently forward,” Mr Brown added.
He said dryer production is now at an all-time high and lay-up is better. It resulted in a mill producing 356 million ft2, 3/8in basis, of plywood annually with a crew of 400.
However, the project is still not finished. A chalked X on the mill floor marks the spot where an MDO press will be installed later this year. This 20-opening press, in storage, was replaced by a 40-opening after the fire. Its plates are being resurfaced.
The mill runs Douglas fir, pine, spruce, fir, and hemlock. Green veneer in 1/10in, 1/25in, 1/40in and 1/6in thickness is trucked to the site. The mill carries about 2.5 million ft2 of green veneer in the yard. It is parceled out to the two 16-section, three 14-section and one 12-section steam-heated Coe and Moore dryers which offbear air through two GeoEnergy RTO systems. Ventek moisture meters are installed on all of them and a Ventek scanner on one. Four Jeddeloh Sweed feeders are in place.
There are two 16-section, three 14-section and a 12-section dryer. Three dryers offbear to Jeddeloh Sweed stackers. Two tenders monitor the dryers. Twenty four hour dryer production is one million ft2 while 1.1 million is laid up in the 24 hours.
A Clarke’s Sheet Metal spark detection system is installed.
Veneer that does not come out in full sheets goes to a Panel Equipment composer that makes it into either a 4x8ft or an 8x4ft sheet for the lay-up lines.
The mill aims for 13% re-dry for good production. Four of the dryers are equipped with Metriguards to assure proper specifications for LVL. The Medford mill supplies about 30% of the blanks for Boise’s White City, Oregon, LVL mill where they are finger- jointed into long beams. This material, with everything laid up parallel, is plywood laminated veneer, or PLV.
The mill has an elaborate flow-through Raimann patching installation with 25 machines, 22 of them in a line. Before the fire, two patching shifts were required, now just a single shift does the job. These machines produce solid faces for special products. The three satellite machines patch for specialised products. A Holt glue loft is run by a single operator.
A Coe spray line and a company-built curtain coater line lay up panels. Both lines were in place before the fire, but required much work to restore operational ability. Mill superintendent Tom Gilman said the spray line requires nine or 10 people to run, but productivity is so great that it replaces about a dozen people. The line uses 11 people for seven-ply and eight for five-ply. This line offbears to a line feeding the 40-, 30-, 36- and 32-opening presses. The computer keeps track of required panel mix. The mill has about 45 different lay-ups from three ply to seven ply. The thickest panel is 13/4in.
The curtain line operates with a crew of four – an operator for the main station, two offbearers and someone to clean up.
Sandwiches move to pre-presses then to 32-, 36-, 30- and 40-opening presses. These are Globe, Globe Raute conversion, Columbia Raute conversion, and SparTek.
Vacuum feeding serves all the machinery on the finish end. Another move was to elevate all the machinery to ease clean up.
A Globe feeder serves the Globe saws which offbear to a five-bin stacker. A fourman putty line, Globe T&G machine, (working predominately 3/4in, but also 5/8in, 3/4in, and 11/8in) and a Kimwood six-head sander round off the finishing side, along with an oiler for concrete form material.
Shipping is 40% by rail and 50% truck. Exports are a thing of the past with the state of California as the principal market along with other areas of the US southwest and eastern seaboard.
In plywood, specialities are a necessity these days. Mr Brown says: “Our grade faces aren’t as available as they were 15 or 20 years ago. You have to compensate with some occasional sheathing. We’re trying to get more into the industrial panel business, such as providing material for window and door part manufacturers. We’re laying up about 13 trucks a week for windows and doors – maybe 4% to 5% of production.
“Our engineered wood business took off and the plywood market followed that trend,” he concluded.
One unusual feature is a horizontal ‘cooling tower’ which cools water from the power plant. Water, at over 100°F, is sprayed into a pond for cooling.
Safety is an important consideration as it is in all Boise Cascade mills. One example is a harness system suspended from the ceiling of the covered truck loading slab. Drivers working on top of their loads tie on to prevent falls, should they slip.
“Your best resource is your employees,” said Mr Brown. “They can tell you what does and doesn’t work. A lot of input from our employees helped with the rebuild after the fire. We had experienced people who knew what they were talking about when they set up this machinery.”

Tolko Industries owns 75% of Meadow Lake OSB Ltd Partnership and manages its new mill in central Saskatchewan. It is a rather greenfield operation but a nearby pulp mill and sawmill have used the resource there for a number of years.
The OSB market has soared since late spring and the company managed to trim three weeks off the new mill’s start up date to try to get some product on the market promptly.
A 400,000ft2 sheet steel building houses the mill that started just 470 days after ground-breaking. Company employees and contractors joined forces to produce an effective planning and construction team.
Eventual production goal for the Can$200m (US$146.3m) mill is 600 million ft2, 3/8in basis.
Manager Ricardo Hillmann said: “This has been designed as a commodity plant. In the beginning we will be running 7/16in as the main product, although we can go down to 1/4in and up to more than 1in thicknesses.
The layout was designed to accommodate a possible second line to produce value-added speciality products. This initial line’s goal is high production of high quality standard products at minimum cost.
The new mill is based on proven technology. Tolko has used lessons learned from its big OSB mill located in High Prairie, Alberta.
Tolko has its own wood supply area with logging and hauling contracted, but will buy about 20% of its supply from private owners and nearby farmers. Eighty per cent of the raw material will be aspen with the balance in various pine species. The conifers will be handled in 8ft lengths.
Average log size is 71/2in with a minimum 3in top. The system will handle up to 20in diameter but this limit will not be reached. There is a nine-month logging season but most of the wood will arrive in the winter with up to 200 truckloads daily. Estimated annual consumption is 900,000m3.
The logs are trucked in through a scaling station to the decking area. The log yard is subcontracted using mobile equipment.
A front end loader feeds two conditioning ponds that will hold 16ft logs for eight hours of production. Pond temperature is between 40°C and 60°C. A separate feeding system handles 8ft logs, lengths that will make up about 20% of the raw material supply.
Two CAE Fuji King tumbling debarkers were chosen to handle the quite varied logs that can range from straight to knotty, dry or frozen. These can simultaneously and efficiently handle diameters of 2in and greater and lengths from 24in and up.
Barking plates are arranged to rock the logs as the rotor turns. Rotation speeds and the outlet gate regulate residence time to prevent over or under debarking.
A twin Tanguay PL460 crane installation assures continuous feeding to the two CAE 28/81 stranders producing targeted strands of 1x51/2in. Output of those goes to 600m3 wet bins. These provide nearly an hour of strands for the line. The cranes, hard-wired to computers, remotely control the head end of the operation.
The two energy units by CTS Energy, Marietta, Georgia, burn mill residues during the summer, but purchased fuel will be necessary during the winter. Residuals from debarking and bucking and from other areas of the plant are stored in bins and metered into the units that supply hot oil heat to the dryers, hot press, log conditioning ponds and, in the winter, to the plant building.
A West Salem Machinery hog processes residues. The 2,000m3 of ash produced annually will be land-filled. These energy units furnish 300oC heat to the twin Büttner 24ft by 80ft single pass rotary dryers as well as maintaining the mill temperature at 20°C, even in -45°C outside temperature. The outlet gas passes through an electrostatic precipitator and the dried flakes are then directed to 600m3 dry bins.
UMA did the detailed design work on all the chain conveyors and flake transportation systems in addition to its principal job of designing the entire plant.
The plant is self-sufficient for fuel in the summer, but requires extra fuel in the winter. The mill has about 26,000 connected horsepower and requires 16MW of incoming electrical power.
The strands are metered into the blender where they receive 3% MDI resin and 1.5% wax. Borden and Tembec supply resins.
Dieffenbacher took over at the forming line that includes metal detection, four forming heads, trim and cut-off saws and press feeder. The surface layer is parallel and the core is cross-oriented.
The huge 12-opening 12ftx24ft press has perforated platens with 1/4in holes providing steam injection to the mat. This feature, not yet in operation during our visit, enables pressing thicker boards with shorter press times.
The cauls impress serrations on one board face to provide a non-slip surface for workers when installing the OSB as roof sheathing.
Press emissions rise to a large hood from where an air suction system moves them through cyclones into baghouses.
Board density is 625kg/m3 with 1,000ft2 of board produced from 1.6m3 of wood. Although the plant can produce thicknesses from 1/4in to more than 1in, 4ftx8ftx7/16in will be the main product.
The glassed-in control room is located above and to the side of the main line. From here, operators and their computers control the forming line, press, dryers, and EFP.
Workers servicing the line from the formers to the press outfeed wear respirators for safety. Production workers work 12-hour shifts with four shifts allowing continuous operation.
The pressed boards offbear to the Globe finishing line that has a two-pass saw system that can cut boards from full 8ftx24ft down to 3ftx6ft. A paint booth and twin Samuel Acme strappers end the line.
The warehouse area beside the saws will hold 31/2 days’ production when the plant reaches full capacity. Both trucks and rail cars can be loaded inside the building as well as outside.
North America and the continent’s central north will be the mill’s main market. About 80% of the mill’s output will be rail shipped and the balance trucked.
Environmental considerations had high priority during mill planning. A high earth bank surrounds the plant and no effluents leave the site. There is a storm water pond which will contain all but 10-year events. Sewage lagoons and 1.25 million gallons of fire pond storage are on the site.
In case of an energy system shutdown, propane can provide heat for the mill with a small vertical standby boiler, but not for operations. Building temperature can be kept at 20°C during the cold winters.
For efficiency, all the offices are in one area. The laboratory adjoins the control room which, in turn, overlooks the forming and pressing line.
Others in the team include production manager Cedric Magic, technical manager Randy Thomas, woodlands manager Dave Knight, maintenance manager Pablo Carbajal, human relations manager Jim Hurd and controller Roger Cook.
Tolko Industries’ general manager for OSB and paper is Rick Huff, based in the company’s head office in Vernon, British Columbia.
Project safety supervisor Bob Callahan is particularly proud of the 850,000 man-hours that have gone into construction and start-up without a single lost-time accident.
Wabi was the general contractor on the project with Pyramid providing the electrical work. Hinz Automation did the electrical engineering and programming work. UMA Engineering Ltd of Vancouver, British Columbia carried the project from the preliminary feasibility study through to detailed engineering.
Allied Blower, Surrey, BC, did all the extraction systems. Grecon handled spark detection as well as the quality system including thickness, weight, and blow detection. The mill has six bag houses.
Although experienced managers and supervisors were recruited from the industry, operators and other hourly workers were hired locally. Management interviewed about 1,500 candidates for the 121 positions. “We did quite a lot of work with the aboriginal community, 30% of our operational group are aboriginese. Performance Associates was contracted to train them. They wrote technical manuals for the various responsibilities. Management individuals also received training,” said Mr Hillmann.
APA is the product inspection agency.
With Tolko holding 75% investment in the mill, the balance is owned by Crown Investments Corp, Meadow Lake Tribal Council, and Northwest Communities Wood Products. The organisation is a limited partnership.