When Hindrichs-Auffermann was formed by the merger, in 1908, of Gebrüder Hindrichs of Barmen and Auffermann of Beyenberg, a lot of history was brought together. Hindrichs Brothers, as it would be in English, was established in 1824, while Auffermann started business in 1811.
The newly formed company specialized in the production of non-ferrous semi-finished products and parts.
In 1948, the company was licensed to produce coin blanks and its last involvement in that area was the stamping of coin blanks for the introduction of the euro nearly four years ago when Hindrichs- Auffermann was taken over by Sandvik of Sweden.
In the early ’60s, Hindrichs-Auffermann started production of press plates with smooth surfaces for the production of laminates. In 1966, the company was taken over by Vereinigte Deutsche Nickel Werke. The production of textured press plate surfaces started in the 1970s, while the production of endless press belts with smooth or textured surfaces came in the early ’90s. These are the businesses on which the company is almost exclusively focused today.
A major change for the company came in 2000 when it was again taken over, this time by Sandvik of Sweden, to become Hindrichs-Auffermann GmbH. Subtle legal changes then occurred in 2002 by which the company became a division of Sandvik GmbH in Düsseldorf.
Hindrichs-Auffermann is now the trading name covering the production and marketing of all endless press belts and press plates for decorative surfacing of panels.
As readers of WBPI’s sister magazine, Surfacing World, will be well aware, that market sector has  been making rapid progress in recent years, meeting demands for ever more realistic textured surfaces, as well as the more traditional, smooth (mirror, satin and matt) finishes. And it is the press plates and endless press belts which impart that texture to the decors.
Hindrichs-Auffermann puts its range of textures into seven categories: ‘Smooth’, ‘Alu’, ‘Perl’, ‘Stipple’, ‘Wood’, ‘Stone’ and ‘Grafic’.
“In Wood, for a more natural effect, we can reproduce the saw marks as well as all the different details and characteristics of the grain,” said Stephan Gierke, manager of process control.
“It is difficult to reproduce the true depth of structures like stone but the demand is for increasing depth – 70 to 100 microns is the average but we are working towards 200 to 300 microns and this we have recently achieved in press plates. There is not so much demand for deep embossing in press belts, but we expect it to increase and this is also under development.”
The required properties of laminates are attractive texture, natural and appropriate gloss level, realistic feel, resistance to dirt build-up and ease of cleaning, and the ability to impart grip to the surface in some circumstances, explained Mr Gierke.
“These are all the responsibility of Hindrichs-Auffermann, working together with its customers.”
Meanwhile, the required properties of the press plates and endless press belts begin with the correct steel grade. Hindrichs-Auffermann uses one grade for press plates and two grades for the manufacture of endless press belts.
The company also has a new grade of steel coming to the market soon for endless press belts, specifically related to the heat transfer properties, to enable higher press speeds.
Steel purity, hardness, flatness and thickness/ thickness tolerances are also important considerations for these press tools.
Production of press plates and endless press belts involves four main stages. The first is the printing of the desired pattern on the metal surface. This is followed by chemical etching in Hindrichs-Auffermann’s case (some use mechanical etching), polishing and hard chrome plating. The required system for mounting in the customer’s press is the final stage of production.
Quality control in this business is absolutely vital as the slightest imperfection in the plate or belt will soon become obvious in the finished, pressed decor.
At Hindrichs-Auffermann, a careful visual check is followed by mechanical tests, gloss measurement, roughness tests, depth control and an assessment of the overall feel of the surface. The more subjective visual and ‘feel’ tests rely heavily on experienced personnel, of course.
As can be imagined, there are special requirements for endless press belts as the welding seams have to be totally invisible and must resist cracking in the severe bending and heating/cooling cycles to which they are subjected, while the chrome plating must also remain totally intact.
Special skill
Textured endless press belts provide an even more severe test of the company’s skills. “The material properties in the seam are different to the rest of the belt and this invisibility after etching is not easy to achieve,” said Mr Gierke.
However, it should perhaps be borne in mind that Hindrichs-Auffermann has been producing press plates for around 40 years and endless press belts for 10 to 15 years now, so they certainly should know how to do it.
The company also offers a refurbishment service for both press plates and endless press belts and re-texturing for plates.
The gloss level decreases with use and ‘window framing’ can also develop. This arises especially in the production of flooring panels and is caused by the grinding and polishing effect between the surface of the melamine faced board and the press plate. As the press opens, the centre of the board moves away a fraction of a second earlier than the edges. At the moment the press plate comes  completely away from the panel, there is a slight movement during which the aluminium oxides attack the press plate surface, giving a grinding effect. This part of the plate thus shows a higher gloss level than the remaining  plate surface.
In order to restore a uniform gloss to the entire press plate, it must then be dechromed, re-polished and the chrome plating re-applied.
Obviously, if a foreign body becomes trapped in the press, more major repairs may be required.
The continuous belt presses often used in the production of laminate flooring, with its abrasive overlay, tend to need more frequent refurbishment of the stainless steel belts.
Of course China is seen by everybody in the panel industry as a growing market and Hindrichs-Auffermann is already there, with a refurbishment plant which it started up earlier this year.
Chinese personnel have been trained at the company’s factory in Germany and some German technicians have also gone out to China. The required specialist machines have been shipped to China from Germany and Sandviken in Sweden, headquarters of parent company and steel producer, Sandvik.
The talk of the decorative surfaces sector today is not just of embossed plates – that is well-established now – but of ‘embossedin- register’ (EIR) textures. This is where the texture is specifically aligned with the printed pattern of the decor to give a realistic see-and-feel dimension to the panel surface.
“We are in touch with several customers and are making some very individual textures with them,” affirmed Mr Gierke. “We are also running some research and development projects in-house to further develop the production of EIR plates.”
In fact, Hindrichs-Auffermann refers to these as synchronous-porous plates and belts and has a range of them due on the market next year, in woodgrain, stone and ceramic finishes.
Global product manager Hans Peter Mischok joined our discussions to comment on the global nature of this business.
“We are supplying all the major panel manufacturing groups with both plates and belts,” he said. “ The top trend in Europe and North America at the moment is for deep textured woodgrains – the rustic-type effects – which we deliver in both plates and belts.
“The Asian market is also increasing for us – particularly in China – while the last two years have been very slow in Europe. But we are beginning to see signs of improvement here too.
“For the last two years, it has mainly been refurbishment and re-texturing of plates and belts, but in recent months we have seen signs of more orders for new plates. Also, the press makers Siempelkamp, Dieffenbacher,Wemhöner, Bürkle and Hymmen are all  reporting increased sales, which is a good sign for us as well.”

Behind the company which supplies just about everything for the panel production line – Siempelkamp Maschinenund Anlagenbau (machinery and plant) – are five other divisions of the Siempelkamp GmbH & Co KG Group in diverse fields of activity.
What could justifiably be called the bedrock company of the Group is the foundry division.
“Our Krefeld foundry is the largest in Europe, and possibly the world, for large castings of up to 300 tonnes,” says Dr Hans W Fechner, ceo of the Group, who joined Siempelkamp in 2001 and took over from Dieter Siempelkamp on his retirement in November 2003.
“And it is profitable because of ‘shared engineering’ in which we have developed the ideal product through the calculation of stresses and so on, with the customer, to develop parts which are both stable and as light as possible,” he says.
Another important branch of the Siempelkamp Group’s business is in nuclear technology. This is linked back to that foundry through the manufacture of containers (castors) for the transport of fuel rods between energy plants and reprocessing facilities. Other highly specific parts for nuclear energy plants are also manufactured, as well as parts for wind farms.
“This is a worldwide business and we are the number one in specialist parts for nuclear power plants, supplying every new plant,” says Dr Fechner, whose own background and qualifications are in that sector.
The Group also includes specialist companies such as Strothmann, which supplies automation and robots for the automotive industry, and another specialist Ferrocontrol, which supplies electronic automation devices for specific customers.
There cannot be anyone in the panel industry who does not know that Siempelkamp makes presses for this industry, but they may not know that the company also makes forging and other presses for the metal industry as well.
“There are only two companies worldwide which can produce these massive presses and we are currently supplying one with a 40,000 tonne pressing force for a supplier to the European Airbus A380,” says Dr Fechner.
All these group activities made up a total turnover of €570m in 2003, employing 2,600 people. Of that total, €350m came from the panel business. Dr Fechner stresses that business has been profitable. And the company is still privately owned, and controlled from the Krefeld headquarters, where currently the vast majority of fabrication is carried out.
“Up to now, our philosophy has been to manufacture everything in Germany, but we have to face the fact that other countries have lower costs,” says Dr Fechner. “The ContiRoll continuous press, for example, is very labour-intensive to make and the  intention is to use other countries for some smaller parts, while investing in the machine shop in Krefeld for heavy milling. We could find ways to do more man-power-intensive parts at lower cost in China or eastern Europe, for example.”
Siempelkamp does have a subsidiary in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada which supplied the electrical controls and other equipment for the Huber and Slocan/Louisiana-Pacific plants there. American-designed handling equipment from Siempelkamp’s works in Charlotte, North Carolina, US, was also supplied, together with the automation.
“Our intention is to be profitable and have a good market share and for a relatively small family business that is only possible with good technology, good ideas and the right people,” says the ceo.
Dr Fechner also values the synergies of the different sides of the business: “There is a lot of interdisciplinary exchange. For example, we can build a press using a combination of foundry technology and press design.” A good example of this is the monster OSB press for the Slocan/Louisiana Pacific project mentioned earlier and under manufacture at the time of my visit in late September.
This is a 12ft x 34ft (3.65m x 10.515m) 12-opening press – the biggest ever built – in which the standard welded design of the press frame structure has been replaced by a mixture of modular cast iron yokes and frame plates linked to the press tables.
Each table weighs about 200 tonnes, but the press is designed as a simple, quick- to-assemble set of modules that can be easily transported. Total weight of the press is 3,250 tonnes and it is the height of an eight-storey building.
The press platens themselves – 34ft length, 70 tonnes weight – presented a new challenge for drilling for the thermal oil passages (a technique pioneered by Dieter Siempelkamp’s grandfather many years ago).
The press cylinders are over one metre in diameter and machined to exacting tolerances on the company’s Krefeld lathes.
Siempelkamp has also been carrying out development work in the forming of OSB mats involving a complete revision of the system. Fine and coarse strands are now separately resinated, which is said to save glue and improve the strand orientation, while optimising the use of raw material.
Heinz Classen is vice president responsible for the wood panel industry side of Siempelkamp’s business, which has suffered a downturn in recent years.
“Like everybody else, we have had three years in a difficult market, but we have made use of this time,” he says. “We have perfected our processes, for example, with the Unilin ll turnkey MDF project in Belgium, which started up perfectly. Also in China with a newcomer to the industry, Dare Group, and in Turkey we have demonstrated that we can do this and repeat it all over the world.
“Another recent example is the Huber OSB project with its 60.3m ContiRoll continuous press line. Our customers are investing a lot of money and need a quick, efficient start-up.”
Another important side of the press business, short-cycle lines, has also undergone a major organisational and engineering reconstruction in the last three years. The presses have been modernised, with new designs and the introduction of multi-piston presses to the market. These are claimed to give major advantages, especially where frequent format changes are required.
“We have also greatly improved the handling systems for paper and panels so that we are now approaching 200 cycles per hour,” says Mr Classen. The company has sold seven of these multi-piston lines in six months, with five going to Spain, one to Germany and one to Turkey.
The trend towards embossed-in-register (EIR) decor surfaces for furniture and flooring has also brought new demands for the short-cycle press makers and Siempelkamp has recently developed a new loading device with camera positioning system to accommodate the demands of EIR.
The company has an extensive research & development (R&D) centre where it can  generate these new ideas, often in cooperation with a customer, and carry out feasibility tests. A semi-industrial plant is then built at Krefeld and tested before scaling up to a full size plant.
The technology of MDF production is one area in which Siempelkamp has concentrated a lot of this kind of research.
One of the latest developments is a new resination system for the fibre in which dried fibre is resinated in a tower, rather than in the conventional blowline before drying.
The fibre/resin mix falls down inside a conical-shaped tower and is mixed in the process, falling onto a belt at the base of the tower and proceeding to forming. A fullscale plant is currently under test at a cus-tomer’s mill in Spain, employing two such towers.
Siempelkamp has also developed a preheating system, first marketed for OSB and called the ContiTherm, for MDF mats before the press, and the first installation was made in Turkey a year ago. Three further orders have been received so far for this system, for Yildiz Entegre in Turkey, Kronospan, Chirk in the UK and Kronospan Sanem in Luxembourg.
Ultra-thin MDF is a current ‘hot topic’ as a base for the new furniture design gaining momentum in Europe. It involves making lightweight panels with honeycomb cores. By ‘ultra-thin’, Mr Classen means 0.4mm to 2mm thickness which, he says, was previously too dangerous to produce. “Speed is the key – anyone can produce thin board 1.8mm and thicker and we have already supplied 24 plants running at 1200mm to 1500mm a second, but our development aim is to go beyond this.
"We are at the semi-industrial testing stage now and our goal is to build an industrial standard line in the next year in Europe or Asia.”
Considering the general impression of the market, Siempelkamp appears to be doing very well. “We are very busy and our engineering department is full,” confirms Mr Classen. “We are working seven days a week, four shifts, and have orders for eight new panel plants to date and have started up nine this year. Also, there is one new short-cycle line leaving the plant every month.”
The eight plants ordered are from Canada (Slocan/L-P), Iran (Arian Chemie), Spain (Tableros Talsa), Turkey (Kastamonu), Poland (OSB, Slubice), Brazil (Fibraplac), China (Fenglin) and another from Turkey (Yildiz Entegre). Start-ups included three in Thailand, three in Turkey – where Siempelkamp has supplied 10 lines to date – and one each in the US, China and Russia.
Also due to start up this year are Rayong (Thailand) and Dare lll (China). Ten years ago, when the South East Asian market was in full swing, turnkey contracts for companies such as Siempelkamp were common. There was then a move towards experienced panel mills putting together their own specification from different suppliers. That is changing again, according to Mr Classen.
“There is a tendency back towards complete packages, driven by factors such as efficient and quick start-up,” he claims. “The financial backers want to know that the plant will  start up in a guaranteed time frame and start making a return on investment and this supports the complete plant approach. Assembling a line from different parts generally costs more and takes longer.”
Siempelkamp has a number of companies which it either owns as subsidiaries, or in whom it has shares, whose expertise it can call on when putting together a complete panel production line.
These include Dr E Schnitzler engineering, Sicoplan engineering, Büttner dryers, CMC Texpan forming lines, Imal gluing and quality control systems, PAL wood processing and cleaning systems, ATR controls and SHS (Siempelkamp Handling Systems). The company also cooperates frequently with other independent specialist suppliers.
An important part of integrating a line and ensuring it runs smoothly is the electronic control, a specialism of ATR Industrie-Elektronic, with whom Siempelkamp has had a long collaboration.
On October 1, it took over all activities of ATR in the woodworking sector, including all  that company’s software solutions for process control technology and trending and moved it to Krefeld from Viersen. This brings in-house not only ATR’s expertise in controls for new lines, but also its competence in retro-fitting existing lines to increase quality and/or output.
China has been the major talking point of the panel industry for some time now and many new European-made lines have been installed there – several of them from Siempelkamp. Indeed it recently gained a contract from Fenglin Fibreboard Co Ltd of Guangxi for a new MDF plant in Baise.
Fenglin already operates a number of MDF lines and will add a ContiRoll of 8.5ft x 37.1m, top speed 1300mm/second, planned annual capacity 230,000m3 (10mm basis).
But things are changing in China, as Mr Fechner affirms: “At present the Chinese government is pursuing a restrictive policy to decelerate the growth in the national economy. This might last for about 18 months and will certainly be forgotten soon afterwards.”
He is similarly sanguine about worries over the lack of raw material. “There is sufficient waste wood available for particleboard production and we will remain present in China and continue to sell the products of our group of companies. The wood market is seemingly increasing its market share and the demand has been clearly identified and projected.”
Dr Fechner also expects investment in OSB production in North America, as long as prices remain firm, and he sees further investment in South America and Russia.

The European Panel Federation (EPF) and the Fraunhofer Institut for Wood Research (WKI) got together once again to organise their fourth symposium in mid-September at  the Maritim Grand Hotel in Hanover. The last event was held on September 12, 2001, the day after the terrorist attacks in the US.
This year’s attendance was impressive, with over 270 delegates filling the conference room to the extent that further registrants had to be disappointed. In fact a waiting list of over 30 was reported. More than 60 delegates came from panel manufacturing companies.
Following the official opening of the symposium by EPF director general Kris Wijnendaele, the president of the federation, Ladislaus Döry, took the podium to give an overview of current challenges and opportunities for the European industry. He also welcomed the FEIC and FEROPA associations, representing the European plywood and fibreboard industries, respectively.
Mr Döry said that MDF had shown robust growth in 2003 and that he expected this to have continued in 2004. He felt that the European MDF market is heading towards a “balanced situation”. He also referred to the strong performance of OSB this year and predicted a return to higher consumption of particleboard in 2005.
Mr Döry also reported on the EPF’s work on behalf of the industry in areas such as biomass use, the issue of VOCs, particularly formaldehyde, CE marking, climate change issues and the CEI-Bois Road Map 2010, as well as the promotion of wood based panels generally.
“If wood, as the oldest building material, is put into question, then it is high time to take action,” he concluded.
Arne Janssen of Jaakko Pöyry Consulting (JPC) spoke on ‘Supply chain development in the European wood based panel industry: a competitive assessment’.
The consultancy conducted a survey on supply chain management, and Mr Janssen defined the supply chain as “the delivery channel of a product from sourcing of input materials to its distribution to the end consumer”.
He defined supply chain management (SCM) as organising the efficient flow of materials and said that all companies were engaged in SCM, whether or not they called it by that name.
“The European panel and surfaces cluster has changed profoundly through valueadding strategies and integration/outsourcing by customers, but new opportunities and challenges exist – the supply chain is a key area which will see a lot of activity,” said Mr Janssens.
He pointed to the challenges of just-intime delivery and product proliferation leading to small lot sizes and increasing operational complexity.
“The clear message from our study was a lack of formal supply chain performance measurement,” concluded the speaker.
Next came professor Arno Frühwald of the University of Hamburg, who spoke of ‘the future potential of wood composites in the building sector’.
He looked at the development of wood based panels’ consumption from 1961 to 2001 and highlighted the dramatic rise in particleboard from around five million m3 to over 30 million m3 in that period. He then said: “The key question is, do we have enough wood?”
He answered this by saying that there was the potential of an additional 150 million m3 a year, or plus 40%, but said that experts predict a price rise of 15-20% by 2020 as increasing removals, and increasing competition, result in higher costs.
Supporting increased use of wood and wood based panels, Dr Frühwald pointed out that wood has the advantage of being a renewable material; requires little energy; is an excellent ‘Kyoto’ material; is easy to process; panels can have optimal properties for every use, including composites with other materials; and there are the superior ecological aspects and image of wood.
The speaker’s consumption forecast for Europe (excluding Russia) for 2020 was for 35 million m3 of particleboard, 25 million m3 of OSB and 20 million m3 of MDF.
He said that experts, among other things, expect some regional shortages of wood, with rising prices, and an increase in use of panels to replace solid lumber.
The second session was devoted to technological developments with presentations by Metso Panelboard, Binos Technologies, Dieffenbacher and natGAS.
Ulrika Backlund of Metso described her company’s system for thin board forming at high speed. She spoke about work on a pilot forming station, which resulted in the development of a full-scale new infeed section to  the dosing bin, giving easy and fast control of crosswise distribution of fibre flow. There was also a new doffing and shredding roller, new infeed section to the former, new forming head and a system for width adjustment without recirculation of fibre.
In the forming head, there are two types of rollers which first level and then even out the mat to reduce density variations and create an even and smooth mat.
Volker Gotsmann of Binos described ‘Latest developments in thin board production’, using a roller-type press to make MDF and particleboard.
He said the advantages of this type of press were: ideal for thin board production; lower production costs; higher availability, no sanding required; and less paint use because of the smooth surface.
Mr Gotsmann also described his company’s new spike-roll former and dry glue blending system, claiming the latter saved glue and reduced emissions and could replace conventional blowline systems.
Günter Natus, technical director of Dieffenbacher’s panel division, looked at ‘new trends and developments in OSB technology’. His paper concerned the strand lengths used in OSB and LSL and he said that forming of longer strands needed to be more effective, and the machines need to be able to distribute different length strands.
Dieffenbacher has developed a longer forming bin which Mr Natus said leads to less variation at the outfeed, while an integrated scale in the bin allows correction of deviations in density before forming actually occurs.
“Controlled air flow in the former improves accuracy just as it does for MDF,” he said, “and we now have a suction system that calms the air flow in the bin and forming heads.” The bin walls are also adjustable to ensure good edges.
He also described the production of improved longitudinal strand lumber (LSL). Steam pre-heating of the mat before pressing improves the density profile of LSL, he added.
Udo Jürgens of German company natGAS looked at optimisation of natural gas use in the wood based industry. He suggested that natural gas prices will rise throughout 2005 and that a fixed price contract now could save a lot of money.
Siempelkamp took the podium for the next presentation, with Marco Krüzner speaking on ‘Resination of MDF in the dry blow line’. “The traditional blowline has disadvantages such as high resin consumption, comparatively long press cure, formaldehyde  contamination in the dryer exhaust and extremely large exhaust gas volumes to be treated, while the blender carries increased risk of glue spots,” he said.
Siempelkamp thus developed its fibre resination tower to resinate fibre after drying. The system was developed in the company’s Krefeld pilot plant and a full-scale plant with a 16 tonne per hour capacity has recently started up at a Spanish customer’s MDF mill.
This uses two resinating towers.
The system employs uniform distribution of the fibres and resin at the top of the tower and a high vertical chute to avoid build-up of fibre on the walls. Mr Krüzner said a low drop speed facilitated long dwelltime on the way down to resinate the fibre, which is then collected on a screen belt.
He claimed that, in 16mm furniture board, savings of up to 40% were achievable compared with conventional blowline blending, while press cycles could also be reduced and dryer temperatures increased.
The next speaker, Detlef Krug of ihd, Dresden, continued the theme with comparative studies on blowline and blender resination of MDF. He concluded that the blowline will remain the most important procedure but that combination gluing, and the Siempelkamp system just presented, were interesting alternatives.
‘Sawdust – an attractive raw material source for MDF’ was presented by Clemens Seidl of Andritz, who began by pointing out that sawdust is one third the price of hack chips. He said that a different digester was required for sawdust, with steam fed up the centre as well as the sides, but that the refiner was the same, albeit with a more powerful motor.
The use of sawdust involves higher energy consumption and higher wear, said the speaker, but it does enable the mill to use a cheaper source of raw material. A mix of hack chips and sawdust can be used, provided the refiner is optimised for this.
Robert Loth is the owner of B Maier of Germany which makes size reduction equipment for the panel industry’s raw material, and he spoke on ‘High-speed flaking – higher board properties, lower production costs’. Maier makes equipment for chipping and flaking for the range of composite panels, but this presentation concentrated on particleboard.
“Screening and cleaning is very important to flaking,” said Mr Loth. “Each stream should be processed separately for contaminants such as non-ferrous items, which improves the life of the flaker ring considerably.”
He went on to describe the detailed design of the Maier flaker to reduce wear and prevent damage to the flakes, while saving up to 30% of energy consumption.
The final session of day one was on Testing and Simulation and began with two presentations by French speakers on structural floor decking. Francois Ravasse of UIPP in France spoke on test under concentrated point load, then Jean-Marie Gaillard of the CTBA gave a graphic presentation of structural floor decking.
Two members of the Greten family, Ernst and Kai, then outlined the ‘Current and future prospects for online measuring technology for the wood based panel industry’ using the equipment made by their company, GreCon.
“The benefits of this measuring technology are the ability to produce more volume of good quality panels, reduce material consumption and diagnose problems early,” said Ernst Greten, who outlined the history of GreCon’s involvement in these products.
Kai Greten spoke about the company’s blister detection equipment, as well as the Superscan surface inspection and Dieffensor systems. “Testing equipment saves money  in bad quality production – or indeed toogood quality production,” he said.
Presentations on ‘The virtual hot press’ (Heiko Thömen, University of Hamburg) and ‘The ultrasonic method of hardboard testing’ (Vygantas Augutis of Kaunas University, Lithuania) brought day one to a close.
After an enjoyable evening reception sponsored by Sasol Wax, delegates settled down for day two of the symposium with the first session on new products and developments.
This was opened by Andreas Michanickl of the University of Applied Sciences, Rosenheim, Germany, on ‘Light wood based panels: state of the art and trends’.
He pointed out that saving material costs was not generally the reason for specifying light weight panels, but reduction of transport costs, ease of handling and assembly of RTA furniture, and the need to save weight in areas such as ships and aircraft, were more important drivers.
He looked at honeycomb cored panels, light MDF, drilled panels and straw boards and concluded that waste paper honeycomb cores will be a focus in the near future and that very lightweight composites will have a bigger market share, while materials other than wood will be increasingly used in furniture making.
Michael Müller of panel maker Glunz AG, Meppen, Germany, reported on his company’s success with coloured-throughout MDF panels, developed in cooperation with resin maker BASF.
A black board was produced in 2000 and by July 2003, the company had successfully produced yellow, red, green, blue and orange panels. It hopes to develop a white one, too.
The next two presentations were a little off the beaten track for panels, being concerned with wood polymer composites and injection moulding of wood chip and plastics. They were presented by Volker Thole of the WKI and Hans-Dieter Hullmann of Lödige Process Technology, respectively.
This theme was continued after the coffee break by Uwe Müller of Kompetenzzentrum Holz of Austria, who talked about extrudable wood/melamine resin composites.
One reason that phenolic resins are not chosen is often the dark colour which they impart to the finished panel.Wolfgang Kantner of Dynea, Austria described the use of resol emulsions to overcome this.
These emulsions impart a white colour tohe resin, and Dynea had put a lot of research into the selection of appropriate emulsifiers and stabilisers to produce them, he said, including reducing the pH to below pH9 and preferably to neutrality. The result, he said, was resol emulsions with good storagestability, although additives such as I are advantageous in reducing press times. Phenol-based emulsions also offer low formaldehyde emissions, he said.
Continuing the theme of resins and additives, professor Edmone Roffael of the University of Göttingen in Germany reported on his work on paraffin sizing. Paraffin is used as a hydrophobing agent, reducing the rate of water absorption and thickness swelling. He concluded that nparaffins are more effective sizing agents for particle- and fibreboards than isoparaffins with equivalent chain length, especially in the range between C20 and C36.
After lunch, the final session of the symposium was on ‘Ecological challenges’ and was opened by Professor Rainer Marutzky of conference co-organiser WKI.
He outlined the volatile organic compound (VOC) and formaldehyde regulations for wood based panels in various regions, with particular reference to the current challenge of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) reclassification of formaldehyde with regard to its carcinogenic risk.
Dr Marutzky’s recommendations on formaldehyde were: the establishment of E1 levels for all wood based panels produced in Europe, with the abolition of E2; a critical review of E1 emission levels and the WHO value; entering a dialogue with the scientific and regulatory communities; and the integration of all manufacturers and users of formaldehyde-emitting products,including non-wood products.
“There has been much progress in reduction of formaldehyde emissions of woodbased panels and other wood products. The average formaldehyde release of most panels has been reduced by a factor of more than 30 during the last two decades. Also, wood products usually have a negligible emission of synthetic VOCs,” said the professor.
“An unattainable aim would be to reduce the emissions of natural VOCs. Softwoods dominate the European forests and technical measures to reduce the emissions of these natural VOCs are very limited. Therefore, the natural VOC emissions as well as the typical odour of wood based panels and other wood products have to be considered in context with the wealth of ecological benefits of wood.”
Christoph Yrieix of the CTBA in France reported on ‘determination of VOC emissions from French wood products, while Kohta Miyamoto of the FFPRI in Japan reported on the small chamber method for measuring VOC emissions.
The final presentation by Sandro Ciroi was on the correlations between European and Japanese test methods for formaldehyde testing of panels.
This very well-attended conference covered a good mixture of subjects from the very scientific to some inevitably slightly ‘advertising-biased’ machinery presentations to coverage of current hot topics such as formaldehyde and VOC emissions.
Excellent simultaneous translation services in English, French and German were provided although some speakers seemed to forget that if their spoken language was unintelligible to a large part of the audience, so would their presentations slides be if presented in the same, written, language.
The next symposium is set for 2006.

In an increasingly competitive market, it is essential to differentiate your product in some way.
Pricing is an obvious route; quality of product also, though this is perhaps more difficult to put across if price is a barrier.
Another way to stand out from the competition is to offer additional services and become a complete package supplier. We have seen this approach used very effectively by the suppliers of complete panel production line packages from woodyard to finishing line.
Steinemann Technology AG, of St Gallen in Switzerland, has an extensive reference list of complete wide-belt sanding lines supplied to panel mills over the last 45 years and its name is a household word throughout the global panel industry.
So how could it offer something additional to its customers?
The answer which the management at St Gallen came up with was a concept called ‘Total Process’, launched on August 20 this year. Its stated objectives are panel quality, availability and cost efficiency.
“We wanted to offer our customers complete optimisation of the whole sanding process – not just the sander or the abrasive, but looking at it as one complete system. This is a unique approach,” says Robert Fehr, manager of marketing and sales administration at Steinemann.
As a result, Total Process offers the customer the sander, service, spare parts and now, in a new departure for the company, the abrasive belts – all from one source.
Having considered a number of potential partners for this venture, Steinemann formed a strategic partnership with abrasive manufacturer and supplier Hermes Abrasives of Hamburg, Germany.
Hermes is now producing wide and segmented belts of 1.3m to 3.2m wide exclusively for Steinemann. As part of the partnership, Hermes will withdraw from that particular market.
The abrasives are marketed under the brand name ‘Steinemann by Hermes Abrasives’.
Kim W Marke recently joined Steinemann as abrasive manager to move the process forward.
“Nobody until now has been able to bring all the parts of the process together so that customers can get everything from one source rather than from several suppliers,” he says. “In the past there was a tendency to push the problem from sander manufacturer to belt maker and vice versa, making it the customer’s problem.
“The goal is not to make sanding belts cheaper, for example, but to give the greatest efficiency to the customer – that is where he saves costs: process costs.”
Mr Marke points out that the cost of sanding represents about one or two percent of the cost of a panel, so reducing the cost of the belts themselves has a very limited effect.
“There are far greater savings available in increased efficiency than belt costs, for example,” he says.
The machines themselves are, of course, at the heart of the Steinemann business, but around these are the processes, service, spare parts and, now, the abrasives.
One of the most critical factors in producing a smooth sanded surface is the elimination of vibration in the sanding machine and Steinemann uses V-belt drives and rubber couplings to eliminate sources of vibration. It also has a vibration detection system that can detect and locate any source of vibration and every head is checked at 10 different locations before any sander leaves the factory.
The process is repeated on installation of the machine and again over the years to detect any wear in bearings, drums, or other parts, which might cause vibration. This can be done remotely using sensors, supplied by Steinemann to the customer, which locate in special positions on the sander.
“Under ‘processes’ we are looking at optimisation of the whole process, not just the sander. This makes us unique on the market,” says Mr Fehr.
“For instance, it is fine to know that you need calibration heads to remove around 80 to 85% of the surface and fine sanding heads or platens to remove the balance, but the machine must be set up optimally to achieve this. The configuration of the sander must be designed and built to meet the requirements for surface quality and speed – different companies have different needs. That configuration involves speed, grit size and a number of other factors.”
Mr Marke continues: “We regularly collect data from customers to help them obtain optimum sanding conditions and identify where their costs are. It may be a matter of identifying bottle-necks in the factory – for example in board handling.”
The service package involves installation, commissioning, trouble-shooting and maintenance.
“We also offer remote control servicing by which we can look into the control panel of a customer’s machine via the internet. There is also a service hotline, and pro-active service maintenance contracts are available.”
The manufacture of wide belt sanders is all carried out in St Gallen.
Steinemann does have sales and service subsidiaries in Curitiba in Brazil, Charlotte in North Carolina in the US, Beijing in China, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia and another in Australia.
The company maintains a spare parts store in Charlotte, but mainly, spares are delivered from St Gallen, within 48 hours – less if required.
Agents are located in around 40 countries.
Steinemann launched its OSIPARTS – Online Steinemann Internet Parts – service a couple of years ago, by which customers can log in and get drawings of their particular machine, via a secure password, and identify and order parts online, if they wish. Otherwise, normal telephone and email services are, of course, also available.
For the abrasives the company can send the belts, and a specialist to install them, to support the customer, rather than just sending the belt and leaving the rest to the customer.
There are two belt types: polyesterbacked and paper-backed.
The new polyester-backed belts were recently developed jointly by Hermes and Steinemann.
“These are not stitch-bonded but woven,” explains Mr Marke. “Stitchbonded belts are OK for rough grits but not for fine and Hermes is the only manufacturer that can treat the backing specially for the purpose, in-house.”
Both paper- and polyester- backed belts are surfaced with silicon carbide grits.
“Hermes only offered stitch-bonded belts before,” says Mr Fehr. “We have not simply taken on Hermes’ range of belts, but are offering a new range, developed with them.”
Summarising the ‘positioning arguments’ of Steinemann in setting up Total Process, Mr Fehr points to “more security, more reliability, optimised support, a faster and more professional service and one contact – one responsible partner – for sander and abrasives.
In December 2002, Steinemann moved into newly-built factory and office accommodation adjacent to its original factory. This brought the manufacturing process, previously carried out in several halls, under one roof and the administration into modern, light offices.
“Customer service, design and sales are now all in close contact in the offices, giving direct feedback on any problems experienced by customers to the design department, for example,” says Mr Fehr.
Apart from the manufacturing and fine balancing of the machines, the factory also has a laboratory in which Mr Marke’s team can test abrasive belts with the rollers and platens, and customers can have demonstrations of sanding to their own particular requirements.
The Arctech coating of steel transport rollers for grip and wear resistance has just been brought in-house for the first time, with the purchase of a new coating system.
Sales of Steinemann’s wide belt sanders literally span the globe, with 200 heads installed in North America, 165 in South America, 1,200 in Europe, 90 in South Africa and 960 in South East Asia to date.
The Satos sander, with its unique mineral-cast frame, was launched in July 2000 and, so far, 280 heads have been sold worldwide. It is available in widths of 2200mm, 2800mm and 3200mm.
Summing up the philosophy of Steinemann, Mr Fehr says: “A sander sale is not just the sale of our top quality machine, but we offer the ‘total process’.

It is still the setting of the homes of brothers Michael and Fritz Egger and their families, and it is still a working farm set in beautiful countryside in the Austrian Tyrol with its spectacular mountain scenery. It is also the site of the family-owned Egger Group’s first  particleboard mill.
St Johann entered the particleboard manufacturing industry in 1961 when Fritz Egger senior set up its first line. Since then, the group has grown rapidly and today his sons can  boast 15 factories in five countries: Austria, Germany, France, the UK and Russia. Those  factories employ a total of 4,900 people and the projected turnover for 2004/5 is €1,708m – up from €577m in 1995. Egger claims a market share of around 11% in Europe.
The raw panel products made by the group include particleboard, MDF and OSB and total 5.17 million m3 a year. But Egger is much more than a producer of raw board, as we shall see.
Impregnating facilities produce 460 million m2 of treated decor paper annually, while postforming accounts for 2.2 million m2, laminates 17 million m2 and coating 168 million m2. In addition, the group produces 6.5 million m2 of pre-fabricated components and 45 million m2 of flooring.
Egger’s first continuous press was installed in 1988 at St Johann. It was the second Siempelkamp ContiRoll ever made and was 23m long. It has since been extended to 33m, in 1992, and now has a design capacity of 420,000m3 a year, or 1,200m3 a day, of particleboard.
St Johann has a 40,000m2 woodyard where sawmill residues, slabs and roundwood in the form of thinnings and branches are stored. The mix is around 75 to 90% softwood and 10 to 15% hardwood species. Wood supplies come from a 150km radius.
There are three knife ring flakers for chipping and the chips are stored according to size and species in the chip bins.
The pre-dryer dries the chips to about 25% moisture content at 100^oC. This is a conveyor type dryer with two perforated metal belts, six metres wide, 40m long. The chips are conveyed to the drum dryer, which reduces the moisture content to around 2.5% at 450^oC at a rate of up to 35 tonnes of dry chips per hour. This is a Babcock-BSH unit (Babcock is now Grenzebach).
Heat is reclaimed from the dryer exhaust, producing a saving of up to 30% on fuel. Egger claims to have been the first mill to start air purification of its exhaust gases with water spray separators and electrostatic filters. Surplus heat from the production process is also used to heat the local public swimming baths.
After drying, the chips are separated into core and surface material before gluing with urea formaldehyde resin to E1 class of formaldehyde emission. The factory uses around 55 to 60kg of solid resin per cubic metre of particleboard. Resin is not produced on site at St Johann but is trucked in by road or rail.
Forming is by Texpan into a three-layer mat which is then pre-pressed by a Siempelkamp belt pre-press prior to entering the ContiRoll.
The control room utilises a mixture of synoptic controls and real time graphics.
Inspection of both sides of the pressed panel is carried out after the diagonal saw, using mirrors under the line to see the underside of the board. Quality control on the line is by GreCon equipment with combined thickness and blow-detector units.
The star cooler takes 124 panels at a time and the final operation on the raw board is sanding in a Steinemann sander.
However, raw board is by no means the end of the story at St Johann.
The Egger Group is very strong on branding all its products in all the market sectors which it serves. Thus ‘Eurospan’ is the brand of the raw particleboard; Eurospan 2000 for thin board. It is also the name for tongued and grooved (T&G) flooring boards.
‘Formline’ is the name for Egger’s MDF products, with Formline 2000 for thin MDF and 3000 for high density board. Formline DHF is a vapour permeable fibreboard for sub-roof panels. ‘Eurostrand’ covers the OSB family of products and Eurostrand OSB Combiline is OSB with MDF faces, for strength with a smooth surface.
The name ‘Eurodekor’ is used for particleboards melamine faced on both sides. The wide variety of designs and colours available, with different gloss factors and structural depths, means that, depending on what the customer wants, countless combinations are possible, says the company.
Eurodekor softformed elements are made from profiled Eurospan with a decorative melamine coating on both sides, provided with a contrasting melamine edge. They are characterised by high abrasion, scratch and stain resistance and are available in many shapes, colours and decors. The edge is glued with a special PVAc glue.
Postformed products are distinguished by the brand name ‘Euroform’ and include worktops and window boards (cills). The range of continuous laminates (CPL) are also branded as Euroform, as are the melamine edgings in pre- or unglued form.
Other products include Egger Melamine and Safety Edging, Egger Prefabricated components and Egger Flooring.
With such a high capacity for producing decorative surfaced products, it makes sense for Egger to have its own impregnation facility for the decor paper. At St Johann there are three Vits impregnation lines fed by a store of 1,400 tons of decor paper. The factory can impregnate 17 tons of paper a day, using 25 tons of melamine and 15 tons of urea.
At the end of the impregnation lines, the paper is cut into sheets and made up into pallets. From here on, the process is fully automated for delivery to the racking, to the short-cycle lines, or to despatch to other Egger panel plants anywhere in the group; there is a range of recipes to suit the different requirements of the different plants.
An automated treated paper racking system was installed in 1998 and is 140m long and 17m high. It can store 840 pallets for the 360 decors used in the production of Eurodekor and around 240 for Floorline.
Adjacent to the main production line building, but in the village of Oberdorf due to a quirk in local boundaries, is the postforming building. Here, worktops, window boards and furniture elements are produced.
Boards are taken from the store, passed through a machine to apply the radius and then pass on to the glue application line. Decor papers are applied to the flat surface in a Hymmen continuous press at 160oC and four bars of pressure and the postforming of the laminate then takes place with PVA glue, cured by infra-red heating to 450^oC.
For unusual sizes and small production runs, there is a second postforming line by Homag.
In the component production area, there are machines for drilling, milling, dowelling and edging any quantity, to order, of 100 pieces or more. This facility includes  NC controlled drilling, milling and edging systems, again by Homag. There are three lines capable of producing 50,000 furniture parts per day.
In this area you also find the softforming line for Egger’s Eurodekor panels. This was set up in November 2003.
The laminate flooring line at St Johann is one value-adding process which does not use the particleboard made there.
The HDF base panel is brought in from other Egger factories and decors are applied in one of the three short cycle press lines at the site. One is a Wemhöner line, while the other two are from Siempelkamp.
The Wemhöner 3.66m x 5.63m press is used for the flooring product, Floorline. Egger’s softformed particleboard products are also produced on this line, which has a capacity of 20,500m2 a day.
Obviously Floorline has a fourth overlay, which is the abrasion resistant surface, compared to the three overlays used for Eurodekor production.
After pressing of the panels intended for Floorline, they are cut to width and then tongued and grooved on all four edges. This T&G section incorporates a ‘click’ profile for glue-less jointing. Finally the flooring elements are inspected on all surfaces and edges and packaged for shipment.
The two Siempelkamp short-cycle press lines for Eurodekor are 5.1m to 5.63m long and 1.87m to 2.4m wide.
St Johann has 15 different structure plates to apply textures to the Eurodekor.
Quality control is by human eye, with shifts changing every 30 minutes.
A new distribution centre was built at this site in 2001 offering a total of 24,000m2 of storage on two levels. It is served by a railway spur from the nearby main line and this handles about 18% of the site’s transport needs. Road transport utilises 60 trucks a day, specially designed to bring resin and chips into the factory and to take panels and components out.
The 15th factory of the Egger Group is not yet in production and marks the first venture of the company outside western Europe, into Russia. At Shuya, approximately 300km to the north east of Moscow, the factory is being built on a companyowned area of 110 hectares.

Founded as a blacksmith’s business in Eppingen, near Stuttgart in 1873, today’s Dieffenbacher GmbH + Co KG has come a long way.
The company’s first hydraulic presses, for fruit and edible oils, were produced before it entered the wood panel industry with particleboard and veneering presses.
Today, the wood panel industry accounts for the vast majority of Dieffenbacher’s turnover, although it also supplies forming and pressing lines for the metal and plastics industries.
The acquisition of Schenck Panel Production Systems from the Schenck group in 1998 brought another vital part of the production system fully in-house for Dieffenbacher and it has incorporated the considerable expertise of that company in forming technology into its product portfolio – and built on it over the years since.
Another more recent acquisition brought the expertise of Schenkmann & Piel into the fold as well. Thus the design, manufacture and installation of dryers, air graders and filters for particleboard, MDF and OSB lines became part of the Dieffenbacher inhouse product range.
However, in terms of primary composite panel production, Dieffenbacher’s own CPS continuous double-belt press, first launched in 1990, marked a major milestone in the company’s long history.
As one of only three manufacturers of such presses worldwide, it gave Dieffenbacher a vital foothold in a market which has changed beyond all recognition, largely due to the continuous press concept.
From the heady days of rapid expansion in the South East Asian panel industry during the 1990s to the expansion of the European particleboard and OSB industries and the North American engineered wood and OSB industries, to the more recent phenomenon of the mushrooming Chinese MDF industry, the continuous press has defined the development of the market.
China has been a particularly successful market for Dieffenbacher, as it has supplied 10 continuous press lines to that country in the last two years alone. Altogether, it has supplied over 20 panel lines, continuous and discontinuous, to China in the last 15 years.
Mr Wolf-Gerd Dieffenbacher, chief executive of the family-owned business, claims that this represents about two thirds of the ‘Chinese pie’ in terms of both number of imported lines and production capacities of those imported lines.
There are, inevitably, those who question whether such success can be achieved without sacrificing profitability, but Mr Dieffenbacher has the answer for those doubters.
“We have been successful in China partly because we have been there for a long time, firstly with Bison and then direct to the market for the last 12 or 13 years.We have an office in Beijing which offers a sales and service point and we plan to stock spare parts there. And there is an online service available,” he said.
“China has been profitable for us, but only because of the way we have worked. We have supplied two basic types of MDF line to that market and the repetition factor has meant that we could make a profit, which we could never have done otherwise. We have also used some locally-made content in the line before and after the press line, just as we have done in some other countries.”
The Chinese market is not an easy one to get into or to stay in and has its own particular specialities.
“The Chinese market is governed by raw material, power supply and availability of finance,” said Mr Dieffenbacher, “and the raw material and electricity supply issues have meant that some of the lines built have been on the small side by world standards.”
“I think China will continue to be a good market, probably not so much for MDF but I think particleboard will start to grow.”
Confirming his company’s commitment to that market, he said that the company plans to start manufacturing in China, under its own roof and name, making handling equipment for panels and chips, and dryer drums. In other words big, low-tech, high transport cost, labour-intensive work.
“It is not economical to make complex parts for presses etc and it is not significantly cheaper than making them in Germany as steel prices do not vary so much. I don’t think that making presses in China makes sense – and we have investigated it very thoroughly.”
The advent of serious business from China’s panel industry in recent years certainly helped a number of machinery makers in Europe as the economies of the west came under pressure and western Europe’s demand for continuous lines seemed to have been sated.
Although showing distinct signs of slowing down, China is still quite an active market for the company, with two orders currently on hand. One is an MDF line for Wei Hua, which already started up one Dieffenbacher line in early 2004 and will start up the second at the end of 2005, producing 450m3 per day.
Dieffenbacher also has a second order from Asia Dekor for a particleboard line to be installed close to its existing one on a site in the Shenzhen area. This will have a 9ft x 20m continuous CPS press with a daily capacity of 700m3.
But outside China there are also two large projects under way.
The first is a continuous OSB line for Kronospan in the Czech Republic at Jihlava. This is a complete line from flaker to finishing line. It will have a 38m press, extendable to 50mplus, and a capacity of 800m3 a day. Start-up is due in mid-2005.
“This will be our third reference on this site, having previously supplied a multiopening line and a continuous line for particleboard,” said Mr Dieffenbacher.
The second major project is for Martco of the US. This again is an OSB line and is more or less a duplicate of that supplied to Tolko’s factory in Meadow Lake, Canada.
However, this is not a continuous press, but a 12ft x 26ft, 14-daylight monster. Unusually for this market, the press length is not a multiple of 8ft because the client believes the market in future will want 9ft and 10ft panels. The line will have a capacity of around 1,850m3 a day.
Meanwhile in Europe, Interbon in Spain is starting assembly now of a continuous particleboard line with a capacity of 1,000m3 a day for which Dieffenbacher supplied the forming, pre-press and press.
Also in Europe, this time for Pfleiderer in Grajevo, Poland, Dieffenbacher extended a continuous press of 30m to 46.5m and this started panel production back in August.
Kronospan in Heiligengrabbe, Germany, also had a press extension, this time for MDF. The press grew from 28m to 39m and started up again in late September.
The former Frati of Italy mill in Sebes, Romania, was bought by Peter Kaindl of Kronospan and contains one MDF and one particleboard line. The first is the subject of an upgrade by Dieffenbacher, while the latter is to have a press extension and a new mat former by the second quarter of 2005.
Russia is an area of increasing activity for the panel making business and Dieffenbacher is carrying out a lot of retrofit contracts there and is expecting some new plant orders as well. “The Russians have the raw material for OSB and a strong plywood market, so I believe there should be a good future there,” said Mr Dieffenbacher.
South East Asia continues to be a strong market for Dieffenbacher, even if it has been quieter since the economic crisis of 1998.
In fact, the company opened a new office in Kuala Lumpur in April 2004 for sales, service and spare parts – and an online service is coming soon. It is an independent company, Dieffenbacher Asia-Pacific, and moved its regional office from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to be closer to its markets in Malaysia and Thailand.
The company is run by Andy Heng, an Indonesian by birth, with considerable hands-on experience of panel making with the Bumi Raya Group of Indonesia.
When it comes to manufacturing Dieffenbacher’s panel production lines, the major components are made in Eppingen, but the company does have a manufacturing facility in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, which it opened 20 years ago.
“We have the capacity to build complete multi-opening presses there as well as a large part of the CPS press,” said technical director Günter Natus.
There is also a sales office based in Atlanta, Georgia.
In Bruno in the Czech Republic, there is also a manufacturing facility where the company makes press parts for the metal and plastic forming industry, as well as forming stations and lines for the panel industry.
Russia is the market which is exciting the industry in Europe, with considerable inward investment by large panel manufacturing companies, as well as some growth by indigenous companies.
“We have had a sales office in Moscow for four or five years but this has now been formalized as a legal entity, which enables us to sign major contracts in the country,” explained Mr Dieffenbacher.
Another traditional area of operation for the company is in short-cycle presses and Wolf- Gerd Dieffenbacher’s brother, Günter, who runs sister company Dieffenbacher  Zaisenhausen, has taken over the production and marketing of short-cycle presses from Dieffenbacher GmbH + Co KG.
“This is a separate company which supplies sophisticated handling equipment and it was a logical move for it to take on the short-cycle press business with what it is already doing,” said Mr Dieffenbacher.
Meanwhile, back in the research and development department at Eppingen, things have not been standing still either.
In the OSB area, the company has developed a new strand forming system. This employs a longer forming bin which Mr Natus explained gives less variation at the outfeed, while an integrated scale in the bin allows the correction of deviations in density before forming actually occurs.
“Controlled air flow in the former also improves forming accuracy, just as it does for MDF, and we now have a suction system that calms the air flow in the bin and forming heads,” said Mr Natus.
“Strand orientation can be quickly adapted to strand dimensions by longitudinal adjustment of the former and the bin walls are movable by 50mm each side to give adjustable width and ensure good edges to the mat, which can be a problem in traditional formers.”
Longitudinal strand lumber, or LSL, is a speciality of Dieffenbacher and can be produced on its CPS press up to 75mm thickness (three inch), with the use of a strand mat steam pre-heater. There is considerable technology cross-over between LSL and OSB in Dieffenbacher’s R&D projects.
The steam mat pre-heater has also been used in particleboard and MDF lines to shorten pressing time. Other recent developments for the OSB market also include the mat pre-heater.
“We are actively developing new products for MDF as well,” said Mr Natus. “For example our inline fibre blending system after the dryer. Here, we spray resin into a duct where fibres are conveyed by air in a much longer and larger diameter tube than a blowline. The application, and the mixing, of the resin and fibre is the key point in this system.”
Also for MDF, Dieffenbacher has just sold the first closed-loop steam dryer, developed by Schenkmann & Piel, and expects to start up the plant before Ligna in early May 2005. This dryer will mean the end of the panel mill steam plume, said Mr Natus.
For the future, Chinese growth looks as if it is going to slow down in the near term but Mr Dieffenbacher is not at all concerned about his company’s current position.
“We are in a good situation, with production booked out to mid-2005 and we are happy with the state of our balance sheet this year, next year and into 2006.We already have 40% of our turnover for 2006 booked.
“We are looking to employ skilled staff rather than to cut our workforce as we had to not so long ago and we are very happy.We are back to the same level of turnover we had in 2001.”