It was a gathering of the plywood clan assembled by APA-The Engineered Wood Association and the Plywood Pioneers Association to recall those initial, virtually hand-made, wonders.
John Murphy, APA board chairman, recalled at a morning dedication at the site of the long-gone mill on the bank of the Willamette River: “It was here in 1905 that Portland Manufacturing Company – a small wooden box factory – assembled by hand a primitive, three-ply panel for display at the Lewis and Clark World’s Fair held that year in Portland. As history records, several door manufacturers were impressed with the product, orders began to come in, and the plywood industry was off and running.”
Several descendants of Peter Autzen, one of the mill’s founding fathers, were there to help dedicate a commemorative plaque.
Bill Bennett, president of the Plywood Pioneers Association, said: “It is very gratifying to me personally, and to the entire membership of the Pioneers Association, to finally have this site permanently marked as the birthplace of our industry. I would like to give credit to Bill Keil, long-time industry trade journalist, who has been one of the most persistent advocates of this commemorative plaque project over the years.”
Chairman Murphy told the evening banquet audience of 300: “This is a great industry. We have played a significant role over the past century in building this country – and this entire continent – and we have contributed immeasurably to North American prosperity.
Most of us have been around this industry for a while. We’ve seen some good times and some bad times; we’ve seen history being made and we have made history.”
And for this, there were awards to veteran industry people. The Gustav Carlson Medal for Process Innovation was presented to Fred Fields of Coe Manufacturing Company. He was involved with Coe for 53 years, and owned the company for 23 years until retirement in 2000.
The Bronson Lewis Medal for Industry Growth, named for the executive vice president of the American Plywood Association, 1969 to 1984, was presented to Georgia-Pacific Corporation, the world’s largest softwood plywood manufacturer, with 19 mills in 10 US states..
Paul Ehinger and Don Dierdorff were joint recipients of W E Difford medals for industry contribution. Mr Difford was chief executive of the Douglas Fir Plywood Association for many years.
Mr Ehinger has worked in the forest industry for 50 years, was on the DFPA board for 18 years and president for two years.
Mr Deardorff began his plywood career as DFPA quality supervisor serving all the mills. After leaving the association he eventually formed a partnership to buy Fourply, Inc of which he later became sole owner.
He was elected to the APA board in 1970, where he served for 28 years and as chairman for two of those years. He was also president of the National Forest Products Association for two years.
As the 20th century emerged, the city of Portland, Oregon was becoming one of the leading centres of the US Pacific Coast forest industry. It was all based on the seemingly endless supply of huge, old-growth Douglas fir logs, many of them logged directly to the Willamette and Columbia rivers and rafted to the sawmills which then lined the Portland waterfront.
A century earlier, Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the US, struck a deal with France to buy two million km2 of what is now the nation’s heartland. He doubled the country’s size for US$15m in what has been described as the “greatest real estate deal in history”.
In 1804, he dispatched two army officers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, with a small party to check out his sight-unseen bargain. The two-year expedition journeyed to the Pacific Coast, where they wintered before returning homeward.
In 1905, the burgeoning city of Portland opted for a World Fair to celebrate the legendary journey and the then current industry. They attracted more than a million visitors. One of the draws was the huge hilltop Forestry Building built of mammoth fir logs. It was billed as the world’s largest log cabin.
To demonstrate Portland’s industrial sophistication, the organisers encouraged development of special products. They approached Portland Manufacturing Co and the result was plywood.
The theory of plywood was not new. Egyptians had used handmade veneer in their tombs thousands of years ago. And England, France, Scandinavia, China and Russia, among others, had worked with rudimentary plywood. The US Midwest had seen work with the product.
But Portland Manufacturing, which had produced boxes and packing materials, started the work in the Pacific Northwest. For a long period it would be the leading producing region.
That pioneering production was strictly a three-ply hand operation. A six-man crew used a St Joe lathe to peel veneer. They dried it in a lumber steam dry kiln and used animal glue warmed over a coal fire and swabbed onto the sheets with hand brushes.
The crew cobbled together a wooden press using hand operated house jacks to apply pressure. A single press load could be laid up in a day and pressing took all night.
The hand made plywood was displayed in the 105ft x 209ft Forestry Building which burned in a huge 1964 fire, destroying all the contents.
Portland Manufacturing itself had the same fate in 1910, but reopened the same year. More modern equipment was installed in line with changing technological times.

This company, which gained a listing on the Shanghai stock exchange in 2001, has seven subsidiaries, involved in glass (its first and currently its biggest business venture), food processing, strawboard manufacture and now MDF.
Sichuan Guodong Construction also has two laminating lines from Dieffenbacher, a Vits impregnation line for overlay papers and two Homag lines for making laminate flooring, all at the strawboard factory, which is located approximately 10km from the MDF/HDF line, both of which are in Shuangliu town, not far from Cheng Du city.
Construction of the new fibreboard line on its 700mu (47ha) site began in March 2004 and the six-storey office building was completed in October. The site cost around RMB50m (US$6m) and a second fibreboard line is planned once the first is running well and has established its market.
At the time of WBPI’s visit in early April, the factory buildings were not complete, as the final equipment installation was not due to be finished until the end of the month. The company hoped to produce the first panels in May.
The main part of the fibreboard line was supplied by Dieffenbacher, from forming to the book saw; of course including the CPS continuous press, which has an effective length of 40.3m and a width of nine feet.
Mr Yunquan Xiong, general manager for the MDF/HDF division of Sichuan Guodong Construction, said this gives the mill a capacity of 300,000m3 on an 8mm board basis. “We will be producing both MDF and HDF and we also want to make a low density board for wall panelling – around 400-500kg/m3,” said Mr Yunquan. “We are aiming for the domestic market and our production will represent around 10% of the consumption in Cheng Du as there are many, many furniture producers in this area.”
The company plans to set up its own raw material base and has plans for 100,000mu (around 6,670ha) of plantations and was in the process of purchasing land in April.
“In the meantime, we will use the existing raw material base in Cheng Du, which is pine and eucalyptus,” said Mr Yunquan.
“The plan is to produce 3, 4 and 5mm raw fibreboard for the construction and decoration markets initially,” said the general manager. “We already have the value adding facilities at our strawboard line, with spare capacity in the short-cycle lines.”
Mr Yunquan then added a surprising footnote: “We then intend to modify the line a little to enable us to produce cardboard. We have applied to the government for a patent to produce cardboard on this kind of line. There is no other line in the world producing cardboard using the dry process and Dieffenbacher has said that they believe it is possible.”
Many panel plants and other factories in China experience problems with the electrical power supply, particularly in the winter, but Mr Yunquan said that, with effect from March this year, the problems in the Cheng Du area had been resolved because more power stations had been built. However, the company does have an emergency diesel generator.
The MDF/HDF factory has an energy plant supplied by Vyncke of Belgium, which Mr Yunquan proudly stated was, at 65MW capacity, the biggest in China.
The mill was also destined to be self-sufficient in resin supply as it will have its own resin plant, supplied by a Chinese company.
“We will produce only E1 board and will also be able to produce E zero,” said the general manager.
Preparation of the wood raw material employs chippers supplied by Andritz of Austria, which also supplied the chip washing, screening and woodyard equipment. The logs are debarked before chipping.
The refiner is from Pallmann of Germany and is a 62in unit – again the biggest in China, according to Mr Yunquan.
GreCon supplied the thickness detection between pre-press and press and Imal supplied the magnetic metal detector.
A Holzma sawing system will cut the panels to the standard 4ft x 8ft size, but the factory does not plan to offer a full cut-tosize service, although it will cut laminate flooring blanks on demand for the flooring line at the strawboard factory.
So Sichuan Guodong Construction has added another 300,000m3 or so to Chinese MDF capacity. This comes at a time when many commentators are questioning the need for the capacity which already exists. But Mr Yunquan is not concerned in the least. “We think that in the next 10 years, MDF capacity will expand very fast, based on information we have. People who say there is too much capacity are only looking at furniture and decoration, whereas we want to go for the construction market with products such as wallboard and we think, in these areas, MDF will continue to have a big and increasing market.
“In China, suppliers of thicknesses under 3mm have sufficient orders. For MDF we have a phenomenon, with imported production lines being used for thin board and locally made lines being used for thicker board,” added Mr Yunquan. “In the beginning, imported and local lines produced the same material but, in recent years, there has been this split between thick and thin.”
In addition to its strawboard and this new fibreboard line, Sichuan Guodong also has a Bison particleboard line in Guangyuan, also in Sichuan province. This is a 50,000m3 a year single-opening line and, as the only line of its kind in south west China, Mr Yunquan says it has a good market.
The company is also considering buying a calender press line for the production of very thin MDF.
Then, maybe, there is cardboard...
“We are also negotiating with the government about increasing our particleboard capacity, because the government wants more particleboard,” added Mr Yunquan. “Our assets will rise to RMB5bn in the next three years and our group president, Wang Chunming, has done a lot of work to achieve this goal.

The annual April ‘Pullman Symposium’ drew 200 panel people from 11 countries to Washington State University in early April.Where once particleboard ruled the event, this year’s session centred on the wood-plastic combinations that are drawing so much interest. Powder surface coatings and integral panel colouring also drew attention as well as air quality control.
WSU’s Bob Tichy and Vikram Yadama co-chaired the 39th annual session.
Michael Ainsworth, executive vice president of Canada’s Ainsworth Lumber Co Ltd, Vancouver, BC was keynote speaker. His company started a switch to OSB some years ago and is now North America’s fourth largest producer, with mills in BC, Alberta and Ontario in Canada, and Minnesota in the US.
Mr Ainsworth told attendees: “Market forces shape where we go as an industry.We have been running at capacity for the last several years with a tremendous growth in the US market.”
He said construction remains the largest market for panels, continuing: “The boom has subsided, but it [the market] is still solid. Pricing has been very strong for the past seven quarters.”
Mr Ainsworth said plywood imports continue to increase. Agreeing with most industry sages, he said: “China is the wild card.” Looking ahead, he said 2007 will be a “very great year” for additional capacity.
He judged two OSB industry thorns as higher resin and transportation costs. He said these are products of sky-rocketing oil prices and railroads failing to invest in new equipment.
On resin, he predicted changes in PF resins with the move towards thicker panels and the trend towards continuous pressing.
He asked rhetorically: “Will OSB finally evolve into oriented strand lumber?”
Maximum achievable control technology (MACT), is absorbing much US time and resources in panel industry pollution control and enforcement will begin next year.
Dave Smith, Evergreen Engineering Inc, Eugene, Oregon said the main focus is on dryers and presses. The regulations allow for a ‘low risk’ listing for mills already passing the mandated control standards. He estimated some 200 plants would be in this class with 30 to 50 of them finally certified.
Gary Heroux, Composite Panel Association, Gaithersburg, Maryland, commented on indoor air quality in relation to composite panels. He declared that the industry has reduced formaldehyde emissions from panels by more than 80% over the past 20 years.
Mr Heroux said most consumer products made with composite panels are not used in raw form, but have some type of surface finish over the substrate acting as a barrier to off-gassing, thus reducing emissions.
The conference next turned its attention to recycling. ‘Green’ mills based on recycled wood have had varying success. However there is apparently a growing market from some who want to make an environmental point.
Reinhard Kessing, Keskon Engineering, Miami, Florida, described GreenTech Panels in Minden, Louisiana, as the first North American particleboard plant to operate successfully with 100% recycled post-consumer waste wood. Annual input is 35,000 tons.
The mill uses pallets, crates, cable reels, construction and industrial wood. One of the keys is compaction of the residues, such as pallets and reels, to allow more material per truck load and consequent lower raw material transportation costs. Pallets come from within a 150-mile radius. Another key is a stringent cleaning process with nine points where debris and metal are removed from the raw material.
Keskon designed and engineered the plant. Crushing, cleaning, metal and debris removal were by Pal srl of Italy. Drying, conveying, blending and pressing with continuous Berndorf bands and sanding were by Modul Systeme of Germany.
Drying is fairly conventional except for two more wind sifters after drying – one for core and the other for surface. The objective is to remove the last bit of ash and other contaminants from the furnish.
Drying costs are lower because the wood is generally at or below 20% moisture content. However, the material requires about 1% higher resin content.
Inge Larsson, Metso Panelboard, and Steve Bruntlett Jr, Masonite International, Laurel, Mississippi, described a steam cleaning system used by Masonite for removing VOCs before the dryer.
Their solution was to separate the dirty steam coming from the refiner, together with most of the volatiles from fibre processing. The dirty steam is condensed and treated in a conventional water treatment plant. The fibres are then conveyed from the steam separator, helped by fresh steam to allow for conventional blow line blending in a secondary blow line ahead of the dryer. Dryer emissions are mainly volatiles from the resin added in the blow line and are managed by control devices such as RTOs.
Rolf Hagner and Cole Martin of Dieffenbacher outlined the growing market for high precision in-register embossing in producing finished composite panels used in such products as laminate flooring and furniture components. Patterns and surface structures are matched to bring authenticity to appearance and touch.
Fred Kurpiel, president of Imeas, Peachtree, Georgia, substituted for Michele Pagnoni, Pagnoni Impianti of Monza, Italy, in describing the growing switch to continuous pressing for surface laminating.
Pagnoni has eight Easylam presses in Europe, handling glued overlaid veneer and laminates bonded to veneer-based and composite panel substrates.
The system can use low pressures and temperatures. It feeds flooring at up to 30m/min. No heat passes through the thickness of the material. A separate hardener provides for the necessary heat to support glue line curing.
Hartmut Pallmann, of Pallmann Maschinenfabrik, Germany, outlined his new double-belt system for bonding natural fibres, plastics and additives in which computer-controlled gravity feeding requires bins and hoppers able to work reliably with sticky materials and bridging in the line. A Palltruder applies friction heat and high pressure to the raw materials. The pressure forces the plastic into the natural fibre bundles, encapsulating the individual fibres and forming a free-flowing agglomerate.
Steam released from the fibres is handled by a vacuum exhaust system.
Professor Mike Wolcott,Washington State University Wood Materials and Engineering Laboratory, then outlined the state of the wood-plastic composite industry, citing Trek decking as probably the best known of the genre in the US.
One particular advantage, he noted, is the ability to do shape and form. Door and window components are typically extruded. Polymer applications go more into durable applications such as house siding.
Dr Wolcott said a new generation of composites is coming about with woodplastic merging into vinyl polymer.
Raw material is largely wood flours in the 20 to 60-mesh range in North America. Pine, oak, and maple are the main species.
Costs of many of these products are higher than wood, but they have real advantages, according to Dr Wolcott. Life cycles are better than pressure treated wood and colour  stability is better; he said consumers demand a high level of colour stability.
Karl Englund, research associate, Washington State University Wood Materials and Engineering Laboratory, explained: “The wood cavities and cells are filled with plastic. You can determine success by checking density.”
He broke down production into raw material preparation, getting it into extrudable form, blending, incorporating plastic into the wood, profile extrusion, cooling, cutting to size and surfacing, if desired.
Changing the subject to press protection and quality control matters, Kai Greten, technical director of GreCon Inc, Tigard, Oregon, described his company’s SuperScan and Dieffensor systems.
Dieffensor is x-ray inspection of the mat between the pre-press and hot press. It detects foreign bodies or high density spots in the mat which might damage the steel belts of the press. It also provides continuous measurement of weight per unit area for rapid response.
SuperScan is an optical inspection of panel surfaces in print, paint, paper lamination and melamine. It is located where the operator can make immediate adjustments in response to the optical inspection.

Some 200km from Shanghai, Danyang is a city of around 800,000 people, located in Jiangsu province, and is famous for spectacle manufacture, but it is also unusual in having two MDF factories with European-made production equipment.
The first to be established was called Danhua and was built by a chemical manufacturing business of the same name, which still has a large production site in the city.
The MDF factory, which produced its first board in 1995, could claim two ‘firsts’ at that time. It was the first continuous press to come into operation in China and the first MDF mill in China to be equipped with a Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous press. At the time of start-up, the design capacity of the line was 180m3 per day.
Since Kronospan took control of the company in 2003 that output has been increased to around 250m3 per day on average. This was achieved by increasing the efficiency of the line using the experience of the Kronospan group in MDF production on continuous press lines. The company was renamed Jiangsu Kronoshuangfeng, which translates to Krono Double Phoenix.
The second European-equipped mill is Dare Global’s.
While the length of the Kronoshuangfeng press remains unchanged from its original 12.5m, (maximum width 2.5m), a flexible infeed was added in 2004.
The line is capable of making thicknesses from 3mm to 18mm, and has produced boards up to 22mm, but its main purpose today is producing 7mm and 8mm HDF with a density of up to 900kg/m3 for laminate flooring, which is also made at Danyang as a moisture resistant board.
Another speciality of the company is 4.5mm thick HDF for the manufacture of shoe heels – a specialised product of Kronoshuangfeng whose precise formulation is a closely guarded secret.
Thin MDF is also produced for sale to producers of doorskins and cupboard backs for furniture, as well as thicker board for China’s burgeoning furniture industry, which is fuelled by strong domestic demand and substantial exports.
The vast majority of production is to the E1 formaldehyde emission standard.
The raw material for the factory is composed of small pine and poplar logs (thinnings) and branches, from managed plantations. It arrives by barge on the Nanjing to Beijing canal and is off-loaded at the factory’s own quay, equipped with several cranes.
Considering the factory was formerly owned by a chemical company, it is perhaps not surprising to find it has its own resin production facility, making melamine urea formaldehyde (MUF) glues in five reactors.
The debarker was part of the original Siempelkamp supply package, while the existing Pallmann chipper is soon to be replaced by a new Klöckner unit originally purchased for Kronospan’s other Chinese MDF mill, Beijing Sinhua, in China’s capital city, but never used there.
Chipping at Danyang is carried out on a just-in-time basis so there are no piles of chips in the yard; clean chips are vital to the company’s quality targets.
The energy plant is fuelled by bark, sander dust, production waste and coal and drives the two boilers.
The refiner is a 42in Andritz unit.
The glue kitchen and the whole resination system was supplied by Imal of Italy and forming is by CMC Texpan, also of Italy and part of the Siempelkamp group. Pre-press, ContiRoll and handling systems are by Siempelkamp, while the stainless steel belts for the press are by Berndorf Band.
An Elmed metal detector is located after the pre-press.
The control room has a mixture of the original synoptic control panels and real time graphics.
After cooling, boards are conditioned for a minimum of three days before sanding in the six-head Steinemann line.
However, as you would expect with a Kronospan factory, raw board is not the end of the story at Danyang.
The factory has a Wemhöner 4ft x 16ft short-cycle press which presses two 4ft x 8ft boards per charge and is equipped with a four-station automatic lay-up system.
There are also two brand new (in March this year) Lutong Machinery Factory shortcycle presses which are each 8ft x 4ft with manual lay-up. The company says this manual lay-up means these presses are ideal for in-register embossed effects.
Printed papers come from some Chinese suppliers as well as Interprint and Schattdecor, both of whom have printing works in China. They arrive as impregnated papers and some come from the Beijing Sinhua factory which recently installed a second Vits paper impregnation line.
The laminated panels produced on these three lines are destined for Kronoshuangfeng’s own laminate flooring production facility, utilising a Torwegge double-end tenoning system to tongue and groove all four edges with a special profile.
Kronospan has made a commitment to its Chinese business and has great plans for its Danyang facility. The company has bought an area of land adjacent to the existing site which will roughly quadruple its current area and will take its property right up to the quay. A railway spur is planned soon to come alongside the river. The new site area has already been cleared but a final decision on what production facilities will be built has not yet been made.
The important thing in the Chinese MDF market, if you want to be profitable, is to ensure a high quality of production. The man responsible for this at Danyang is Kronospan’s Eugen Kohler, who has long experience in the panel industry in both machinery supply and panel manufacturing.
“Maintenance is very important, especially for the motors and gearboxes,” he says. “We maintain them as you would aircraft engines.”
Kronospan has built up quite an impressive presence in the Chinese market. It not only has two MDF factories, but also has a 70% stake in China’s biggest supplier of machinery to the panel industry, Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Co.
Many people are talking of an imminent slow-down in the recent dramatic growth of the Chinese MDF manufacturing industry. They also talk of MDF taking second place to new particleboard lines in the near future.
However, demand for MDF remains strong while that for particleboard remains generally depressed.
True, there are far fewer enquiries for new continuous MDF lines currently, but this could only be an adjustment period.
What is certainly true is that the quality demands of the end-users are increasing, especially if they are exporting their production of furniture or laminate flooring. But the Chinese consumer is also becoming more sophisticated and quality conscious as home ownership rises.
That is why Kronospan says it is confident of the success of its Chinese businesses. The company can bring European know how in terms of high-quality production and it also knows how to make that quality economically, while using European equipment tried and tested in its many other mills.
It seems likely that those long-established Chinese MDF producers, using older, small capacity locally-made lines, are the ones who may have to quit the market – sooner rather than later.

The ownership may have changed and with it the acronym for the company, but Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Co Ltd, now known in short as SWPM, still claims the largest market share for MDF lines in China, as well as leadership in a number of other panel machinery sectors.
It came as a surprise to many in the industry when it was announced that the giant, family-owned, Austrian-headquartered, Kronospan panel making company had enlarged its empire by taking a 70% stake in Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery. The contract was signed between SWBPMC and Peter Kaindl of Kronospan on October 1, 2004, but took effect on January 1 this year.
 “The business is still the same, it is just that the majority shareholder has changed,” said vice managing director Zhang Guoxian. “Before, the company was 100% owned by Shanghai Electrical Corporation Group, SEC, which is the third largest company in Shanghai after the Bao Steel Corporation and the Automobile Corporation (which has joint ventures with VW Audi and General Motors).
The SEC group had two main lines of business in the wood panel sector: SWBPMC and Green Continent. The latter company was not part of the deal with Kronospan and continues to own and operate at least five MDF factories in China.
Kronospan has adopted SWPM as the acronym for the company rather than the more cumbersome former name of SWBPMC. The other major change since it took a majority holding has been to axe 400 out of the 900 jobs at the Shanghai factory.
“Peter Kaindl saw an increasing involvement of European companies in the Chinese panel industry and this acquisition was part of his strategy for the future,” said Mr Zhang. “We are very happy with this cooperation.We were like a small boat and Kronospan was the aircraft carrier.We needed a strong partner and Kronospan has already made a big investment in buying a majority stake and will continue to invest in this company.”
 The new board of directors has five members. Two are from the former SWBPMC – Mr Wang Jinxing who continues as managing director and Mr Zhang – and three come from Kronospan.
The company had a good year in 2004, selling more than 20 MDF lines in China, employing its multi-opening presses. It also sold one of these MDF lines to Pakistan.
By March this year, the company had already signed five new multi-opening MDF line contracts in China and one for India. It had also signed one contract for a singleopening particleboard line in China.
Another five projects were under discussion at the time and this does not include SWPM’s involvement in other sectors of the panel industry.
Its short-cycle press lines continue to generate good business, as do its multi-opening lines producing high pressure laminate (HPL). “We sold many short-cycle lines last year, including some exports to India, Pakistan and elsewhere,” said Mr Zhang.
The company sold an HPL line to Formica in Shanghai and one to another Formica division, Siam PSM in Thailand, both in 2004.
Presses for the manufacture of rubber belts and printed circuit boards complement SWPM’s activities in press line manufacture.
The company makes smaller refiners for MDF fibre production, up to a maximum of 42in diameter, but larger refiners are purchased from Andritz of Austria or Pallmann of Germany.
Chippers are generally supplied by Chinese company Sufoma, which also competes to some degree on MDF lines, but only the smaller ones.
“For lines of 80,000m3-plus, we have a 100% market share in China and we are very experienced in multi-opening press lines,” said Mr Zhang. The company was founded in 1958.
While single-opening presses for particleboard are also supplied to the Chinese market, the demand in recent years has been strongly in favour of MDF and Mr Zhang does not see this changing any time soon.
“I do not see a big growth in particleboard production. Most customers in China prefer MDF. The consumption of MDF in the country is high because of new apartments being built and this will continue, with demand for HDF for laminate flooring also increasing.”
The government is not allowing the building of any new wet-process hardboard lines in the country for reasons of pollution by process effluent and the plywood industry is not in good shape, said the vice managing director. “We have had no orders for plywood press lines in the past two years.”
There is much talk of a wood raw material shortage for MDF in China, but Mr Zhang does not see any reason for concern.
“The raw material price is increasing but supply is generally no problem. The big MDF producers have plantations, particularly in the east in Jiangsu Province and in the southwest in Guangdong. Most plantations in China are of poplar, eucalyptus and pine species.”
Where SWPM does have a problem, in common with all heavy manufacturing industry in China – as elsewhere in the world – is in sourcing steel, where he admits the price is rising very steeply and supply is difficult.
For some years now, Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Co Ltd has been working on the production of a continuous press for MDF production and a couple of years ago there was talk of imminent manufacture. However, Mr Zhang made it clear that the first SWPM continuous press was not likely to appear for some time yet.
“There are many technical and manufacturing problems to solve and it will be some time in the future when we may produce a continuous press.We have to design a completely new machine and this will require major investment in new machine tools, if the patent and design issues are resolved.”
The 40,000m2 factory in Anting, a city on the outskirts of Shanghai famous for its massive automotive manufacturing plants, boasts a wide range of machinery and is where the majority of components for SWPM’s machines are made. The latest addition is a large Chinese-made milling machine for use in the production of hot press platens. There is also a new workshop housing the company’s CNC machines.
All lines are assembled and tested at Anting before shipment to the customer.
So it is ‘business as usual’ at SWPM following Kronospan’s investment; the order books are healthy and the company is optimistic about the future, both for MDF and for its own share in that growing market.

Two short years ago, in April, we visited a half-built MDF factory in Danyang City, Jiangsu Province. It produced its first board in July 2003.
It was the Dare Group’s first venture into panel making; the company previously had been involved in the manufacture of silver paper for cigarette packets, specialised  packaging, aluminium alloy wheels for automobiles, cigarette filters and computer products.
It is still involved in all those activities but recent years have seen dramatic growth in Dare’s commitment to the panel industry, with the construction of three continuous MDF/HDF lines and one for particleboard.
Line two for MDF is at Fuzhou in Fujian province while line three is in Maoming in Guangdong province.
All three of these MDF lines employ Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous presses and have design capacities of at least 200,000m3 a year each.
For its fourth line Dare Global, as the company is now known, chose to make particleboard. This line, which was under civil construction work in April and is scheduled to produce its first board at the end of this year, is a big one. Design capacity is 450,000-500,000m3 a year, again employing a ContiRoll press, to feed the particleboardstarved Chinese market. It is located in Sanming in Fujian province.
The company “hopes” to produce that first board by the end of the year, but experience indicates that its hopes are normally realised, with some very short bare earth-tofinished-panel times. History also suggests that design capacities for Dare are on the conservative side of actual production figures.
Dare Global also has two MDF lines supplied by Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Co Ltd, one in Funing, Jiangsu province and the other in Fuyang, Anhui. Both are 80,000m3-capacity lines and both went into production in 2002.
The contract with Siempelkamp for the Danyang line was formally completed with a down-payment on May 15, 2002 and the first board was produced on July 31, 2003 – a feat which the company suggests was the fastest start-up in China, at 14 months.
If you take into account the fact that China went through its SARS crisis during that time, with all the restrictions on movement of labour which that imposed, the achievement is even more remarkable.
Many Chinese cities are famous for their concentration of companies manufacturing one particular product. In Huizhou, Guangdong province, for example, it is mobile phones. In Danyang, it is spectacles, but Danyang is also unusual in having two modern continuous MDF lines – Kronoshuangfeng and Dare Global.
The 29ha Dare Global site is located beside a canal and the company has a 600m-long quay with 10 cranes to unload barges loaded with logs. These are of pine, poplar and a little mixed hardwood, supplied in fixed lengths of two to three metres.
Some of the log supply comes from nearby, some from up to 1,000km away, via the Yangtse River. The mill consumes 400,000 tonnes of wood a year and normally holds about 100,000 tonnes in stock.
However, logging is banned from approximately July to September, so a buffer stock is essential during that period.
Being beside a river does have its disadvantages in that part of the site had to be piled due to the soft land and there were some challenges with regard to the press foundations, but even that evidently did not slow the project’s progress.
Logs are debarked using an Andritz drum debarker and the bark forms part of the 100% wood-based fuel supply for energy production, being carried by overhead conveyor to the Vyncke energy plant.
Andritz also supplied the disc chipper and the chips produced go to a 4,000m3-capacity concrete chip bin.
Chips are washed and screened on an oscillating screen before going to the Andritz digester and the 58in refiner.
Gluing for the line was supplied by Imal of Italy, a part-owned subsidiary of the Siempelkamp group.
The vast majority of MDF production and all laminate flooring is to E1 standard, with a little E2 in MDF, but the company plans to produce E0 very soon, as it wishes to capture some of the Japanese market.
The production line is only 1.5m off the floor so the control room is at ground level. Some say this is an advantage, while others prefer to have a greater clearance under the line for easier access for maintenance.
The Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous hot press is 37.1m long and 8ft 6in wide and can run at a maximum speed of 1,200mm per second when producing 3mm thick panels.
Thickness and blister detection after the SHS (Siempelkamp Handling Systems) diagonal flying cross-cut saw is by Imal, while the three star coolers and all panel handling at the end of the line was imported from SHS of Germany.
From the cooler, 200mm stacks of MDF panels are assembled and then transferred by automatic overhead crane to build 4mhigh stacks which are then taken by automated transfer truck to intermediate storage on concrete bearers in the warehouse.
Sanding is carried out on a Steinemann eight-head Satos sander with mineral-cast frame and this is followed by a cut-to-size system supplied by SHS.
Master panels are cut to 4ft x 8ft, 6ft x 8ft, 7ft x 8ft and other similar sizes, but the factory is not geared up for small cut-sizes, for furniture components for example.
Dare Global occupies a very large site in Danyang. In a separate building there is a laminate flooring production line producing flooring under the Power Dekor brand, which is a joint venture with Asia Dekor, another Chinese MDF/HDF producer.
The Danyang factory produces seven million m2 of laminate flooring a year for both the domestic and export markets and, like the MDF/HDF line, runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The flooring line employs a Wemhöner short-cycle press and a Torwegge tongue and grooving line. Boards are conditioned in a special warehouse after laminating before being machined.
The paper lay-up for the presses is contained in a glazed enclosure for cleanliness and for moisture and temperature control.
A second Wemhöner short-cycle line was planned at the time of my visit in early April, with the contract already signed.
Dare also has a second laminate flooring line already in operation in another building on the site, employing Chinese-made presses. It also has a separate factory for another type of flooring – laminated flooring, which is made up of three layers of veneer, and this facility has a capacity of about two to three million m2 a year.
Completing the facilities at the Danyang complex is a small furniture production line making panel-based cabinets.
The river and the rail network are used to deliver finished products, as well as road transport. For example, boats are used as the most economical way to deliver thin board to a flooring manufacturer in Suzhou.
So we can see that Dare Global has gone from nothing to a total group panel capacity of around 1.2 million m3 in three years, making it a very significant player in the Chinese market. Its customers are in China and the Asian region in general, with a lot of its flooring being exported to both Asian countries and Europe.

Headquartered in Monza, on the northern outskirts of Milan, Angelo Cremona has been supplying complete plywood production lines and veneer slicing lines for a very long time.
While plywood is the oldest sector of the panel industry, tracing its history back to the time of the ancient Egyptians, the machinery used in its production has been the subject of continual development.
Cremona says the need to obtain a quality product, while achieving savings in labour and materials, is increasingly felt by all manufacturers of peeled veneer and plywood.
The material costs, the number of workers assigned to the drying process and the need to select the sheets based on grading features have all increased, taking an evermore important share of the final product selling price.
The most logical solution, then, is an automatic system which dries the veneer without breaking it, has the ability to recognize the dried product’s humidity, density and surface defect parameters, and automatically stacks the sheets in bundles determined by these parameters.
Thus Cremona’s latest automated drying system is structured in four areas: sheet preparation and infeed; drying; sheet analysis; and bundle stacking.
The bundles of moist sheets are positioned on roller ways placed on the ground, and placed close to one another in order to obtain optimum use of the dryer width. The bundles are conveyed on platforms and then positioned under the vacuum feeding device which rises to allow the suction pick-up of the sheets and their introduction to the dryer infeed rollers.
The position of the rubber rollers, the possibility of adjusting the suction strength and other selection devices are designed to ensure that the sheets placed on the roller conveyors never overlap, even when they are very moist or have been stacked for some time before drying.
Cremona says the speed of the feeding device ensures productivity is maintained, even with thin or very small sheets.
The variable speed of the roller ways feeding the upper decks, together with front alignment devices, is designed to allow a good infeed rate suited to various working conditions.
To obtain maximum machine utilisation, Cremona says it has integrated within the loader a fast ejection device for the pallets on which wet veneer bundles are normally supplied.
When the veneers have entered the process, a series of rollers conveys the pallets under the connection roller-ways, where a special chain-driven device pushes them to one side and stacks them, if necessary, ready to be picked up and brought to other lines to be re-used.
The drying process must ensure fast water evaporation, conveying inside the dryer without bumping or excessive pressure, and allow physiological wood shrinkage. Cremona’s patented ET Dryer employs bars to do this. The material to be dried is conveyed between two decks of rods moved by chains at the sides of the dryer and towed by two gear motors at the end of the machine.
The small diameter steel rods, connected by strips of steel plate, allow the heat to reach the surface of the sliced veneer and don’t ‘hit’ the sheets, as roller dryers can, during drying. Cremona says this limits the height of possible curling of a sheet during the water evaporation phase.
 This kind of conveying is designed to ensure that all sheets fed to the dryer will be conveyed with care throughout and that possible cracks in the veneer will not be increased. Also, the sheets will not be shattered when they are dry as tends to happen in roller dryers, says the company.
Depending on its length, the dryer is divided into two or three areas whose environmental parameters can be set according to need; the temperature and moisture values are automatically controlled by setting the reference measurements.
A moisture circulation system between the various areas ensures a precise distribution to optimise water movement from the inside to the outside of the wood and to obtain a very elastic, dry, peeled veneer which is not fragile.
The dryer is made of modular panels whose thermal insulation ensures that the outer plates of the machine are just a few degrees above room temperature, minimizing the loss of heat inside the dryer and avoiding energy wastage. The radiant batteries inside the machine, whose pipes have an elliptical section, are designed to ensure low load losses and to maximise thermal exchange performance. Flow conveyors divide the air on various decks to ensure constant drying on each deck and in all positions in which the sheets are conveyed.
In a factory, it is normal to find a container near a roller or net dryer where broken veneers are dumped during the drying operation. Cremona says that, with its roller bar dryer, this container is no longer necessary.
For sheet analysis at the dryer outfeed it is necessary to bring all sheets back to only one conveying deck to start the dimensional and qualitative analysis. A series of angle, belt and roller transmissions aligns the sheets and sends them towards a belt conveyor which passes the first measuring device: the moisture and density analyser.
The reading of the residual water content is performed on the entire sheet surface and the data obtained is stored in the virtual directory assigned to each sheet. The analysis of the various readings will then be processed to automatically adjust the dryer speed up or down.
Sheet density values are also analysed and stored in the virtual file. The reading of the two parameters is performed at a speed which ensures the sheet outfeed operates without interrupting the drying process.
Continuing the path, the sheets are aligned at the side, by a belt conveyor which, unlike rollers, does not jolt the sheet, thus preventing fall-out of dried knots.
The veneer is then analysed by a colour camera, which scans the sheets and reads their defects. This can identify open and closed knots, cracks, colour differences and fake thickness due to blind holes, the presence of bark and any other defect which must be considered in describing the overall quality of the sheet. The data read by the camera is added to the virtual directory of each sheet and stored in the PC memory.
After the camera, a vacuum stacker with different stations places the sheets on top of each other to obtain a homogenous bundle.
Where to convey the sheets is decided by the PC which, depending on the parameters chosen by the operator during production line setting, analyses the virtual directories of each sheet and compares the data with the reference setting. The number of sheets, with quality information and general features of each bundle, is thus known, making it possible to define another value which can identify each bundle in order to help in the stacking or composing operations for pressing.
The data processing produces a bar-code, placed on the bundles to report the specific quality, which can also be printed out.
There is only one conveying speed for the whole line after the dryer; speed differences between the single machines are no longer necessary. A device on the angle transmission ensures the necessary space between the sheets so stacking in the stacker is performed smoothly.
To unload the bundles, a powered double carriage, which runs along the vacuum stacker, takes the bundle from the platform and, by means of a special feeding device, positions the pallets on the empty platform.
Two stacking stations on the ground will house the unloaded bundles and the pile of spare pallets, ensuring stocking of the products and giving enough time for the operator to best manage the ejection operation of the bundles already processed.
The advantages claimed for this system are that it is managed by a single operator from a computerised control station; the only other personnel required are the ones who position the sheet bundles on the infeed rollers and remove the dried bundles.
This, says Cremona, both saves labour and means the material choice is performed with parameters no human can assess, and remains constant through a working shift.
Also, it says, the dryer always works at the maximum speed appropriate to the moisture of the material, to give constant high production values. The adjustment of the dryer optimises energy consumption, allowing considerable savings, while the identification of the sheet quality allows optimal use of the material to obtain constant quality and size.
The mechanical features of the resultant panels will also be ensured by the identification of the distinctive parameters of the processed and graded product, says Cremona.

It is only a few kilometres to the ski slopes of the Alps to the north and the historic and beautiful town of Bergamo to the south, and the sides of the valley rise steeply on either side of the river Serio, which runs alongside the headquarters of CMC Texpan in Colzate.
But in spite of its scenic beauty, this is still an industrial area, famous for textiles and the machinery used in their manufacture, although that business is struggling against the competition from the Far East.
However, CMC Texpan is one company here which isn’t struggling – it has a healthy order book for its traditional products for forming lines for MDF, particleboard and OSB  lines and has recently added components for short-cycle press lines – for its part-owner Siempelkamp GmbH of Krefeld Germany – to its portfolio.
The CMC Texpan company was originally founded as CMC by Mario Zoppetti in 1962. His son Dario cooperated with the Texpan company in the 1970s and the company name became CMC Texpan in 1997 when the two companies merged.
Meanwhile, in the mid-1980s, complete panel production plant supplier Siempelkamp took a 25% share in CMC Texpan, and in February this year, it bought another 15%, leaving Dr Dario Zoppetti as the major shareholder, with 60%.
“The target of this was to increase the presence of Siempelkamp in the company in order to increase the range of products made here and the cooperation between our two companies,” explained Dr Zoppetti.
CMC Texpan has for some years been the supplier of the forming lines used in virtually all Siempelkamp-supplied particleboard and MDF production lines. Today, the company’s order books contain quite a high proportion of projects to upgrade older lines and increase their quality and capacity with the latest forming technology, as well as supplying to new projects.
“We are continually working on refreshing our lines – increasing the quality and characteristics of existing lines as well as making new products,” said Dr Zoppetti. “In fact, about 50% of our turnover is in upgrades and 50% in new plants these days. Usually they are our original lines but sometimes we replace other suppliers’ lines.
“For the foreseeable future, I think there will be more upgrades because there are many plants with older machinery which is often OK but needs to be more productive.”
Recent contracts for upgrading include Depalor’s particleboard forming line in France, completed in August 2004. The two mechanical heads were upgraded to improve cross-weight distribution and thus the properties of the panel.
Kaindl of Salzburg also took delivery of two upgraded mechanical forming heads, and a balanced pressure roller after the final mechanical head, this May.
Other upgrades include Ernst Kaindl’s Osmoloda factory in Russia which, requiring a number of modifications, took the opportunity of planned down-time to implement CMC Texpan’s mat width adjustment system.
Besides upgrading the mechanical forming heads to the latest system, engineers from Colzate removed the disc separators between the dosing bin and the wind chamber for the surface layer, inserting glue lump extraction screens. They also eliminated the disc separators between the dosing bin and the underlying mechanical head and then installed a new separator above the dosing bin. The width adjustment system with chip recycling devices now produces a mat with variable width from 2,490mm to 2,070mm.
Following such modifications, Osmoloda will reach a production capacity of  approximately 1,200m3/22hr, based on 16 mm-thick panels. The agreement between the two companies was signed last January and the modification should be delivered, installed and commissioned during this summer.
In Thailand, Metro ordered a press extension from Siempelkamp to increase its ContiRoll from 23.8 to 30.4m, requiring the addition of a fourth forming station as a second mechanical core former. Capacity there is planned to increase from 750m3/22hr to around 1,100m3/22hr on a 16mm basis.
Pfleiderer’s Russian particleboard plant also received modifications to its forming line, as did Egger’s particleboard line at  Rambervillers in France.
In OSB, CMC Texpan is to supply the mat forming station for the Slocan project in Canada as part of the complete line supplied by Siempelkamp and currently under erection. This is a six-head forming station with a 3,860mm forming width.
Designed for particleboard production with variable width and thickness, the Kastamonu plant in Turkey has wind mat formers for surface layers and oversized mechanical machines for the core layer. The forming station has a width adjustment system for panel widths from 1,830mm to 2,150mm. The plant will have a production capacity between 1,200 and 1,500m3/22.8hr, 18 mm basis.
China is also on the project list. CMC Texpan is supplying  mechanical-head mat formers for both surface and core layers, with width adjustment from 2,550mm to 2,110mm, to Dare’s mill in Sanming – another Siempelkamp main contract.
“Forming is normally part of the press line package for new or upgraded plants, so being part of Siempelkamp is certainly an advantage, but of course we still have to fight on price!” said Dr Zoppetti.
“It is a partnership with Siempelkamp and we work together, sharing our knowledge on start-ups and so on. For example, at the Slubice project in Poland, we suggested larger storage bins for wet and dry flakes and cooperated with Siempelkamp to get the best efficiency from the line.
 “We have produced bins and bunkers for MDF and particleboard many times before, but not for OSB, so we are delivering a new, cheaper kind of bunker, which we have tested together with Siempelkamp, for the Slubice OSB line.”
Parts of the bunkers are being made by a local company in Romania, to CMC Texpan’s drawings and under its supervision.
A new development by CMC Texpan is a weighing system, or mat scale, to go after the former and in the former, with the dosing system regulated by the mat scale within the former.
CMC Texpan also cooperated on a Crown Former forming machine for particleboard, jointly with Siempelkamp, in 2002 for those who prefer mechanical forming.
In 2003, it launched the Star Former for MDF, designed by Siempelkamp’s R&D department in Krefeld to reduce the cost and increase the quality of the former. This machine is made by CMC Texpan.
Talking of reducing costs – as everybody is these days – CMC Texpan is looking at the manufacture of some components for its equipment in China for the Chinese and other Asian markets.
“We did a similar exercise in Romania and made many parts for dryers and other machinery locally in a commercial arrangement with a manufacturer in Cluj Napoca in Transylvania,” said Dr Zoppetti. “The quality is acceptable and the costs are lower.”
 Such far-flung places as Romania, Russia, China, Thailand and North America seem even further away as you look out of the windows of Dr Zoppetti’s three-year-old head office building in CMC Texpan’s mountain valley home.

Imal, a certified ISO 9001 company, not only specialises in gluing systems, blending equipment, on-the-line quality controls and laboratory testing equipment, but also in the supply of patented blending systems for the production of MDF.
“These gluing systems allow the end consumer to achieve substantial resin savings, lower formaldehyde emissions and increased dryer capacity,” says managing director Loris Zanasi.
Founded in 1970 in Modena and currently having 120 employees, Imal is still growing.
“Sales continue to increase due, above all, to our constant research into new products and technology for applications in the wood based panels sector,” he says. “Our policy to annually invest 4% of our profits in research and development, a division where five full-time engineers collaborate in close conjunction with the Modena and Bologna University Research laboratories, enables the company to retain its reputation as an avant-garde manufacturer in this industrial sector.”
Mr Zanasi is delighted to report that his company has supplied its first fibre resination system in the Far East, after having completed 13 such installations; and 23 MDF blenders worldwide. Start-up of this newly installed system in South Korea is planned for the third quarter of this year.
Imal is also planning to put its first fibre resination system in Greece into operation over the same period.
With this new fibre blending technology, which he says is fully tried and tested in 13 MDF mills, Mr Zanasi says Imal is able to guarantee customers resin savings of around 20% on current resin addition rates with traditional blow-line blending. This guarantee is accompanied by a spot-free board surface and the same physical-mechanical board properties.
What basis does Imal have for this claim? Mr Zanasi says it is justified because the results are even better in practice.
“In the case of flooring production, for instance, where small surface spots are reasonably acceptable because of the paper covering process, it is possible to achieve even better resin savings,” he asserts.
In this system, the fibre and resin are mixed together in a special blender after the dryer, to avoid the destructive effect which the heat of the dryer has on the resin; to offset the loss of resin properties and binding capacity, most producers tend to increase the amount of resin they use.
The first factor Imal takes into consideration in a mill using traditional methods is dryer temperature – the higher the dryer temperature, the better and more visible the results are, says the managing director.
“Another benefit of this system is the reduction in dryer energy and consequent increase in dryer capacity, since less resin, and hence less water, is introduced into the dryer, making it possible to dry greater quantities of fibre,” he explains.
For traditional fibre resination plants with blow line injection, Imal has designed a new ‘common rail’ system, so-called because it closely resembles the latest diesel engines. The glue is sprayed through injector nozzles into the blow line. An accurate digital pressure gauge measures glue pressure, which is kept constant, despite variations in flow rate, and Imal claims this results in efficient blending at both high and low flow rates.
Imal also supplies lines for the production of particleboard-based pallet blocks. These lines can be installed parallel to existing particleboard lines as much of the equipment used to prepare the material will be the same.
Compared with traditional, solid wood pallet blocks, the new generation blocks have excellent mechanical and physical properties, says the company, because it is possible to vary density, impermeability, dimensions and thickness. Also, the blocks do not split when nailed and, above all, waste wood and recycled wood may be used to produce them.
“The concept of making pallets with pressed wood, rather than solid wood blocks is rapidly catching on,” says Mr Zanasi. “In May alone, three pallet block production lines, equipped with the new patented steam pressing system, were put into operation in Italy, enabling the mills to reach an elevated daily production capacity.”
In the OSB sector, as well as supplying glue blenders and kitchens, Mr Zanasi says that Imal is a leader in the design and installation of the Fines Recovery System. This system screens out the face and core strands and diverts the small-sized particles to a traditional particleboard blender.
The low concentration of the glue mixture injected into this blender reduces the amount of glue the fines can absorb.
“The Fines Recovery System has been installed in several OSB plants in North America, with excellent glue savings confirmed by the testimonial letters received from our customers,” says Mr Zanasi.
In the plywood field, Imal has designed several moisture control systems for veneer, with automatic dryer control to reduce dryer energy waste and increase productivity.
Imal also manufactures on-the-line thickness gauges and board quality control equipment and Mr Zanasi says this division is strengthened by the Imal R&D team upgrades, which are designed in conjunction with on-site experience acquired in a variety of applications installed worldwide.
“The careful choice of components and circuit configurations makes system operation possible in even the most adverse environmental conditions, which are typical of many of today’s emerging markets,” he says, “and special attention has been given to upgrading the hardware to meet recent safety standard requirements, such as ATEX.”
Among new quality control designs presented in 2005, pride of place is given to the PSD (on-line Press Security Device), made to meet the increasing need for composite board manufacturers to identify impurities such as tiny pebbles, stones, metal and other high density impurities like plastic or lumps of glue, which could be present in the wood flow.  Identifying and eliminating impurities at the pre-press outfeed helps protect press and steel belts.
With an appropriate processing of the received signal, it is also possible to obtain the real time transverse density profile of the mat, which may be reproduced with current graphic technology (3-D in colour) for a clear view of the mat and to highlight any forming defects which may be present.
Other new quality control devices include the RSD (Refiner Security Device) to detect and automatically eliminate impurities from chips at the refiner infeed; also the IBX600,  a brand new laboratory machine for carrying out all mechanical property tests and X-ray density profile at the same time, and the LOS (laboratory optic screen), able to carry out fast optical screening by means of a computer and specially designed software to rapidly produce a continuous graph, rather than a discrete graph, as is the case with the traditional screening process, says Mr Zanasi.
Among Imal’s traditional and well-known quality control equipment is the thickness gauge and blister detector; TS100 mat water spraying unit; CDP200 on-line density  profiler; and complete range of moisture detectors for installation before and after the  dryer, on the forming line and in the laboratory.
For the laboratory, there is the DPX200 X-ray density profiler; IB600 laboratory testing machine; and the ROC100 roughness optic control, the new laser technology surface analyser. “Last but not least, in addition to the PSD and the RSD, there is the SDS (spark detection and extinguishing system) which fully meets the current ATEX safety requirements, and the APX (cyclone anti plugging device), which completes the range of safety control equipment,” says Mr Zanasi. “Imal also has a wide range of instrumentation to offer for the measurement of moisture content, such as the UM300, suitable for installation after the dryer, the infrared UM700 and the new infrared UM700F with fibre optic technology for installation in ATEX areas.”

Since its foundation in 1978, PAL srl of Ponte di Piave, Treviso, in the north east of Italy, has dedicated itself to the area of wood preparation for the particleboard industry.
The company’s wide range of equipment covers crushing, extraction, screening, cleaning, refining, sifting, de-sanding and weighing and metering of the chips used in panel production.
Italy is a country with a very poor forest resource and, as a result, has in a sense been forced to become expert in the use of recycled wood. For instance, the largest Italian panel maker, the Mauro Saviola Group, uses 100% recycled, or urban, wood supply to make well over a million m3 of particleboard panels annually.
The use of such raw material presents particular challenges, as it must be thoroughly cleaned to remove anything from sand to bullets to avoid damage to the panel maker’s production machinery – or to the saws and moulders of his customers during subsequent processing.
Thus PAL was ideally placed to adapt its technology to this task and has developed machines which cover the spectrum of cleaning and sorting of chips; and exported that technology all over the world.
Until now, PAL has only dealt with the products of chippers supplied by other companies, but that is about to change.
The company has formed an alliance with fellow Italian company Globus of Galliate, west of Milan, close to Novara.
“We have joined forces to strengthen the position of both companies on the market,” explains Romeo Paladin, founder and president of PAL. “The target of the alliance is to become stronger on the market, which is increasingly selecting its individual suppliers. We are engaged in global solutions for wood preparation where there are chipping and flaking operations. Globus is a specialist with a very new patented solution for flaking to improve the quality of the flakes, to increase the capacity of its knife ring flakers and to drastically reduce the wear inside the machine.”
Fabio Paron is the managing director of Globus and he explains the innovations on his flakers: “The problem with a flaker is always to spread the chips throughout the flaker and this leads to localised wear and to uneven-sized flakes. Our idea is to install a spreader inside the machine which is oval and runs eccentrically – it is called a wobble spreader – and which is separately driven and acts as a real spreader.
“Flakers generally haven’t changed for about 10 years, until now. This new flaker is also the largest on the market, giving increased capacity with constant quality.”
Mr Paron claims the spreading effect enables an increase from a maximum blade size of 500mm to 700mm, or plus 40%.
The new flaker is known as the Knife Ring Flaker SRC 1400-AR. This patented Globus system has already been supplied to customers in South Africa, South America, Italy, Greece and Indonesia.
Globus has been on the market in debarkers, chippers and flakers for over 20 years. In its earlier days, it repaired and reconditioned machines made by other manufacturers before moving into the manufacture of its own machines, using the experience gained to improve and modify the concepts.
“A second innovation of Globus is a type of rollscreen, debuted as a prototype at this year’s Ligna exhibition in Hannover, Germany,” says Mr Paron. “It is known as a ‘lobe screen’ [due to the shape of the screen components] and it will be integrated into PAL’s range of Dynascreen and Quadradyn screens to complete the ‘roll screen family’.
“The lobe screen makes the material jump, thus helping to increase separation of pollutants, fines, wet fines and so on; jumping is much more efficient, especially for ‘sticky’ fines.”
Mr Paladin takes over the story: “To complete our solution for the wood preparation area, there were two machines missing from PAL’s portfolio: chipping and flaking. Now they are part of our offering to the market. We are working together in the alliance, shortening the communication line between supplier and customer. The lobe screen will be integrated with the Dynascreen to provide the most appropriate solution.”
The innovations were presented at Ligna under two banners: Globus Pal Screening Alliance and Flaking Alliance.
Meanwhile, PAL has been experiencing considerable success in its traditional market, as marketing and sales manager Fabio Chiara points out: “We have received orders for all the recent particleboard plants in Turkey and for a new sawdust sifting system at Kaindl’s plant in Salzburg, Austria. Also the upgrading of preparation areas at the Kronospan pant in Scharja in Russia.”
In April, PAL also received the order for preparation areas for Kronospan’s Osmoloda and Kharkov plants in the Ukraine.
North America has been a good source of orders for the company as well, especially for the Quadradyn screen.
The first of these screens, specifically designed for screening the strands used in OSB production, started operation in April 2004 at the Huber Broken Bow 504,000m3 per year OSB mill in Oklahoma, US.
“We have sold 16 Quadradyn primary screens, together with several secondary screening machines since then and completed assembly of a plant in Jihlava in the Czech Republic for Kronospan in early April.We are also installing three Quadradyn screens at the Canfor/Louisiana-Pacific mill in Fort St John, BC, Canada.” That mill will employ the  largest multi-daylight press in the world, supplied by Siempelkamp, to produce over 725,000m3 a year of OSB and is due to start up later this year.
Martco in Louisiana has also signed up for three Quadradyn systems for its new OSB line, while Grant Forest Products has bought six. “Quadradyn is the only OSB screening system with proven results, by which I mean installations up and running, and every new OSB mill built worldwide in the last year – since Huber proved the worth of the system – has specified the Quadradyn,” says Mr Chiara proudly.
Research and development (R&D) has always played an important role in the development of PAL’s business and Mr Paladin is proud of this fact.
"We have moved our R&D department to a new location in a new building here at our headquarters with much improved facilities,” he says. “We are continually expanding this department because it is very important to be able to test customers’ materials and to be able to verify our methods. The new laboratory also has a 3ft x 16ft 6in Quadradyn screen, which is an industrial, not a laboratory size, and we are continually testing many pounds of materials from our US customers and others.”
Since it entered into cooperation with IMAL srl of Damaso, Italy, in which the latter took on responsibility for marketing glue systems and quality testing equipment in 1998 – an area in which the two companies previously competed – PAL has been able to concentrate that R&D effort solely on the area of wood preparation. Thus the company already had a considerable track record in the area of cleaning and screening. What it couldn’t offer directly to the customer was the machinery to produce the chips and flakes.

Paper impregnation is a very specialized business and Tocchio, as one of only two major manufacturers of such impregnation lines in Europe, and one of very few worldwide, is the first to admit that it could not do it alone.
“Any new developments in this industry are the result of close cooperation by paper makers, resin producers, the end-user and our research and development team. We work together and Tocchio makes the necessary investments to achieve the desired targets,” explains Emiliano Tocchio, who, with his father Umberto, runs the 31-yearold, family-owned company.
Umberto Tocchio started with a small workshop three kilometres away from the existing, expanding factory to which the company moved in 1996. The original premises are now used for storage.
Today’s factory stands on a site of 20,000m2 on the outskirts of Vigevano, which, until recently, had an undercover area of around 9,000m2. However, an extra 2,000m2 was added to the production facilities in May of this year and this extra space is primarily for the assembly of the company’s large impregnation lines. With those lines currently being anything up to 80m long, some space is obviously needed.
However, that may be about to change as Tocchio is working on the development of a revolutionary system which will result in shorter impregnation lines and, claims Emiliano Tocchio, a more efficient way of carrying out the impregnation process.
Like everybody in manufacturing of anything these days, Tocchio faces continual pressures to make lines which will run faster but, of course, cost less. Not that there haven’t always been challenges to face, explains Umberto Tocchio.
For example, 15 to 20 years ago paper weights for impregnating papers were 100-160g/m2 but now they are often 60-70 grammes. This is not just due to the efforts of the  paper makers, but there is more accuracy in the forming of a particleboard mat and in pressing, glue distribution, sanding, and so on, to produce a better panel surface. This then enabled the use of such low grammage papers.”
So what was the next challenge for a company like Tocchio? You probably guessed – it was cost.
“China and Asia can compete using their low labour costs and, sometimes, lower material costs,” explains Mr Tocchio. “The challenge we have to answer is how to improve and increase sales of our impregnation lines against this competition from Asia. Our  customers are asking us for a lower price but the best performance at the highest speed.”
Emiliano Tocchio points out that they can achieve certain targets, as they already have, working with their customers’ laboratories, Tocchio’s own extensive R&D facilities and specialist laboratories in universities. But the company needs to go further in the current market.
“We are trying to develop simpler impregnation lines at better prices but with higher speeds – a different range of products for different markets,” he says. “There are some customers who do not require [the speed of] a ‘Ferrari’ but want the same end result in terms of quality and reliability.
“Up to now we have concentrated on the high-level production end of the market but we have to address the price-sensitive markets as well.We will launch a new range of machines shortly to address these needs.”
One does not have to travel far in the panel industry in China to find a panel mill which has a European made impregnation line such as Tocchio’s which it uses for preference, but a cheaper, inferior, locally made line in another shed that is pressed into service for periods of high demand.
“We are developing a new coating system to coat with one or more layers of resin,” says Mr Tocchio junior. “The resin is not exactly a liquid – it is a different formulation – and the system can work with two different kinds of resin: a urea and then, say, a melamine for low pressure melamine papers.
“The conventional system employs a bath but, as this new system is enclosed and pressurised, it enables the building of a smaller line.We are also developing a new drying system.”
The use of in-register embossing, particularly for laminate flooring producers, but also for furniture, is a rapidly growing trend and, if this is to work successfully, it is vital to limit the expansion of the paper, explains Mr Tocchio. “This is why we are developing a drying system which does not use air or high temperatures – to reduce the expansion of the paper.
“In all this R&D, which is at an advanced stage, we are working closely with universities and foreign partner companies.”
Talking of these new developments brings us back to the issue of the length of impregnation lines. “With this new injection and drying system, we should be able to about halve the length of the line,” says Emiliano Tocchio. “Thirty to 35m should be more than enough and we will still achieve speeds of around 200m a minute. A  conventional line for low-pressure melamine runs at about 60-80m a minute and costs around €2m. Customers may pay a similar amount, but they want to produce about 50% more.”
Umberto Tocchio agrees: “The future is definitely high speed but with the maintenance of good quality. One of the major panel producers in the world is already rewinding paper at 120m a minute, 24 hours a day, and higher speed is already here and is certainly here for the future.”
There has been some heightened publicity surrounding formaldehyde emissions recently and Tocchio is already supplying a bio-filtration system to clean formaldehyde emissions from impregnation lines. The company has also developed an on-the-line measuring system for weight and moisture content for its lines.
In common with many machinery suppliers, Tocchio offers a teleservice/remote  monitoring assistance service to its customers, including the facility to connect via  modem to one of its supplied machines anywhere in the world and make remote adjustments.
“In the unlikely event that that is not enough, after-sales service is not just words for us, but a fact – we guarantee physical intervention in 24 hours maximum, if it is necessary,” says Emiliano.
“We also offer chemical and technical assistance to our customers with new products, new resin formulations and it has always been this way for us.”
Internally, the company has a new storage system for components, to rationalize and improve efficiency, and it has installed an ERP Business Management System for ‘cradle to grave’ tracking of every order; the company knows exactly what stage every order has reached at any given time.
“It has always been my dream to have such a system – an exact picture of the situation – how many hours spent and so on. Now we have it,” says the founder proudly.
It may have been tough in the panel market recently but Tocchio’s turnover increased by 10% between 2003 and last year, with exports going to Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Syria, Germany, Russia and South America, as well as to the home market in Italy. It supplies about 12 impregnation lines a year.
The company is also planning a joint venture production company for impregnation lines with a partner in Asia.
Apart from its activities in the panelrelated industry, accounting for over 80% of turnover, Tocchio also makes impregnation lines for the specialist filter paper industry, the food industry, and for the manufacture of masking tape. Lines for the glass fibre industry are another speciality.