The Latvijas Berzs company was founded in Latvia in 1873 making blackboards and carpenters’ pencils and moved into plywood production in 1909.
In 1923, the Furniers plywood mill was established and in 1929 the Lignum mill was added to Latvia’s plywood industry.
Soon the country had 12 plywood manufacturing companies making 54,000m3/year with the vast majority being exported to countries within Europe.
However, the onset of World War II and the subsequent take-over of Latvia by the Soviet Union saw a major decline in the industry. During the Soviet occupation (1945-1991), plywood was only made from Russian logs and most of the panels produced went to the Soviet market.
With the independence of Latvia in 1991, the plywood business fell sharply as there was no longer a supply of Russian logs, but then the industry underwent something of a revival and once again used the country’s own wood resources to make birch veneer.
In October 1992, the state-owned Plywood Production Union of Latvia, which had been established in 1975, became the joint-stock company Latvijas Finieris and that company has since continually modernised and expanded its product range.
It has modernised all its plants and now offers a wide range of birch plywoods in exterior and interior grades, overlaid with films, decorative-veneered, painted and special plywoods for laser cutting.
Applications include concrete shuttering, transport, interior walls, furniture, shopfitting, lockers, chairs, exterior walls, toys, sports halls and skateboard ramps.
Latvijas Finieris produced its millionth m3 of plywood in 2002 – 10 years after its creation.
In 1995, the company established a subsidiary called Troja Ltd to make wooden toys. Troja is also a plywood processor.
Latvijas Berzs ceased plywood production in 2002 and now concentrates on the production of furniture and furniture parts.
Like all countries emerging from under the Soviet thumb, Latvia had to re-establish itself in an open international marketplace and find its own customers. It has now developed a network of trading enterprises, with subsidiary companies of Latvijas Finieris in Sweden, Germany, the UK, Spain, North America, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland and Japan.
The company has also invested heavily in new equipment and new capacity for plywood production at its mills.
In 2000 a new production line was established at the Furniers mill, specialising in the production of 5ft x 10ft panels, and the whole factory was refurbished.
In 2004, a new generation peeling line, supplied by Raute, was set up at the Lignums plant to complement the existing line from Japanese supplier Uroko.
But it is not just modernisation which is receiving attention. The company’s latest investment plan is due to come on stream in 2007.
This is a completely new plant for the production of plywood, in the Latgale region of Latvia, with a planned capacity of 65,000m3/year. Investment will total LVL56m (US$99m) in this project alone.
For 2005, Latvijas Finieris plans to produce 222,000m3 of glued products and to exceed LVL100m turnover, logging 510,000m3 of wood, some being imported.
The company does have its own birch plantations – over 1,000ha of them – and these are currently used for scientific research and public education. There is also a nursery in Zabaki producing half a million birch saplings annually.
Not that Latvia is short of wood generally. The country was 45% forested as at January 2004, compared with 24% in 1930.
The forest is approximately 50% stateowned and 50% in the private sector.
However, a disastrous storm in January this year brought down about 7.3 million m3 of wood – equivalent to about half the annual cut – but the country can apparently absorb this loss without too much problem.
The mix of tree species nationally is about 37% pine, 30% birch, 19% spruce and 14% others such as aspen.
The capacity of the Furniers mill is around 60,000m3/year, mainly as 5ft x 10ft panels and nearly all exterior grade. There is a total of five peeling lines housed in their own  building and logs are soaked for 24-36 hours at about 45oC before peeling.
Roller coaters are used to apply the phenolic resin to the dried veneers which are then laid up into embryonic plywood and put into Raute cold presses.
The newest hot press, installed in 2000, is a Raute 30-daylight computer-controlled unit.
There is an inspection/filling line where  workers make a visual inspection and repair minor imperfections in the faces of the panels. This is followed by a Steinemann sander.
Close to the Furniers mill is the Troja mill, where Latvijas Finieris makes loudspeaker boxes and wooden toys, notably rocking-horse chairs for small children.
Troja is equipped with a Schelling panel saw and an SCM Record 240 router for cutting out shapes; at the time of my visit it was being used to cut out circular table tops.
This factory also has forming presses for pressing curved shapes such as chair backs, column claddings or a variety of other uses.
The company’s other plywood production facility, the Lignums mill on the outskirts of Riga, has six peeling lines: one by Italian company Cremona, four by Raute and one by Uroko, and an annual capacity of around 150,000m3.
The factory produces mainly 4ft x 8ft and 4ft x 10ft panels, although it can also produce some 5ft x 10ft.
The mill is equipped with a variety of manufacturers’ equipment including Hashimoto veneer clippers and Omeco, Babcock and Raute driers.
It employs Plytec automatic defect detection guillotines and Plytec patching machines, while stitching is by Kuper.
There are five 17-daylight hot presses, one Steinemann and one Timesavers sanding line and a Schelling cut-to-size system.
The Lignums factory also has a paper impregnation line for the production of phenol impregnated paper for overlays and one Raute short-cycle press and two multidaylight presses to apply that film to panels for shuttering and transport uses.
Some pre-impregnated film is also bought in from Stora Enso and 40% of production at Lignums is film-faced.
Latvia is a small country, with a population of just 2.3 million of which around one million live in Riga or its suburbs.
The forest products industry is vital to the economy, accounting for 40% of total exports, while 85% of wood product production is exported as sawn wood, plywood or particleboard.
Latvijas Finieris is continuing to invest in its plywood production capacity and downstream products and as such must be a valuable contributor to the economy of one of the European Union’s newest member countries.

Close to 150 delegates attended the International 3-D Symposium, organized by Heinrich Wemhöner GmbH & Co KG of Herford to present and discuss the latest in 3-D technology and its many and varied applications.
As a well-known manufacturer of presses for flat and 3-D lamination of panels under its Wemhöner Pressen banner, the company has held a number of such symposia in recent years, but one of the things which made this event special was the venue.
The MARTA Museum in the centre of Herford was constructed around a disused textile mill which was the subject of a preservation order by the local authority. That building is preserved in the heart of the new museum. The forms employed by the architect Frank Gehry for the new part of the ❅28m building certainly give it a unique appearance and as a prime mover behind the planning and execution of this major project, Heiner  emhöner was especially pleased to host the symposium in this venue.
“For me this is a dream come true, to hold this event here, as a particularly appropriate link between this museum and the furniture industry,” said the chief executive.
Welcoming the delegates, Dr Hannes Frank, director of adhesive maker Jowat and president of the chamber of commerce of IHK Lippe zu Detmold, emphasised the importance of North Rhein-Westphalia as the centre of the German furniture industry.
He also announced the establishment of the Wemhöner Award for young furniture designers.
Wemhöner is also one of the commercial partners, together with Jowat and Scheider Möbel, in establishing a professorial chair for wood technology at the Lippe and Höxter Fachhochschule for three years. It is specified that the appointed professor “should seek close cooperation with the relevant companies active in the region”.
The keynote speaker at the 3-D Symposium was professor Dr Dieter Spath of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering in Stuttgart.
Dr Spath extolled the virtues of innovation and emphasised the difference between innovation and invention, saying that innovation is something new which has been implemented in the market, while invention is the creation of something new.
“We are supporting a broad innovation initiative and a wide-ranging innovation offensive,” he said.
“Our [Germany’s] competitiveness is under pressure and we have to understand that our labour rate difference is too large when compared with the Ukraine for example.We must continue to rationalise, to nurture brands [like BMW and Mercedes] and focus on new technologies and innovations. We need to re-establish innovation as a German strength. Technology push and market pull must work closely together.”
The first speaker, Dr Tilo Pfeifer, said: “Germany is the world leader in registering patents, but 85%-95% of all developments don’t reach the market. The trigger for innovation is normally finding solutions for problems you have experienced but the mistake is to look at problems rather than their causes. Improving one element does not necessarily improve the whole chain, but Innovation Process Optimisation (IPO) is a holistic approach which treats the chain as one.”
Dr Pfeifer espoused the DMAIC cycle – Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control – as a means of improving innovation potential.
Peter Wippermann, Office of Trends, Hamburg, then told the furniture industry to “Innovate or die!”. He predicted a return to more ornamentation in furniture and interior design.
Professor Dr Udo Koppelmann cautioned against over-complication, pointing out that many drivers of modern cars do not even know what their car is capable of.
“You must analyse whether a development is perceived as an advantage,” he said.
“The bait must be palatable to the fish, not the angler!”.
Session ll, ‘Understanding design as a chance’ began with the design awards (see box text).
Then came Andrej Kupertz, chairman of the German Design Council.
“I don’t see 3-D technology as ‘mature’.
Design in your industry is something that can be merged with your very good technology,” he said.
He identified three long-term trends: access to future opportunities, smart simplification and personalisation using digital technology.
Professor Dr André Wagenführ of the University of Dresden looked at the use of real wood veneer in 3-D forming and at sandwich panels with veneer faces for light weight.
Klaus Monhoff of panel maker Egger said: “You must oppose the appeal of greed with a stronger appeal of design.” He said that a mix of styles was very important, such as the interaction of wood and metal and different styles within a kitchen for example. “The two mega-trends are individuality and wellness,” he said.
Another Egger man, Manfred Riepertinger, outlined the essential qualities for a 3-D mouldable MDF panel in terms of smooth moulded surfaces and stability and suggested that Egger’s Formline E1 MDF-MB membrane pressing quality board had all the required characteristics.
Professor Dr Adrian Riegel of FH Lippe and Höxter, Lemgo, looked at the technology of shape cutting in MDF for 3-D applications. He distinguished between roughness and waviness of the surface, pointing out that waviness was more of a problem as it telegraphs through surface coverings.
Dr Heinz Werner Lucas of Bayer looked at innovation in adhesives for 3-D applications,
saying that “Only knowledge of the capabilities and needs of the other partners in the value creation chain will result in constant high quality and in the development of exciting new business opportunities.”
Dr Christian Terfloth of adhesive supplier Jowat asked: “New adhesives – do they keep their promises?” He answered his own question by saying that “Jowat’s onecomponent and reactive polyurethane dispersions for 3-D lamination are surely examples of truly innovative adhesives which do keep their promises.”
Dr Günther Deiringer of Klöckner Pentaplast looked at the alternative types of 3-D films such as PVC versus PET. He concluded that PVC is the best product currently available, while the progress of PET will be related to cost reduction through alternative raw material technology.
Andrea Luca of Italian machinery maker Cefla reviewed his company’s glue spray application technology.
Detlef Hanel of host company Heinrich Wemhöner presented a Variopress line capable of producing 80,000 pieces of 3-D furniture elements per week on a fully automated line from raw component to packaged end product. He used BLP UK’s line as an example, saying it had the capacity to have 24 or more kitchen door elements per tray and offered flexibility and high capacity.
Further presentations covered actual applications of 3-D laminating, membrane type, data management in production, sustainability of manufacturing processes in an ecological sense, and scenario management.
The last mentioned topic was presented by Andreas Siebe of Scenario Management International AG, Paderborn. He concluded with an appeal to the assembled delegates to look ahead: “If you don’t think about the future, you cannot have one.”

Chairman Jim Reeb of the sponsoring College of Forestry group welcomed the attendees and set them off on two days of instruction by a dozen US and Canadian university professors and industry suppliers.
Steve Zylkowski, quality services director of APA – The Engineered Wood Association, Tacoma,Washington led off by announcing record North American panel production last year. He declared, “All engineered wood products are doing very well in North America, and LVL [laminated veneer lumber] is probably the most robust. North America is the target for LVL exporters.”
He noted that skyrocketing oil prices are forcing resin prices upward, but other factors such as US housing starts are very positive for the panel market. After the record 2004, he expects housing starts to decline slightly until gaining over a two-year period, beginning in 2008.
China is much in the news, but Mr Zylkowski said Brazil has a much larger impact on softwood plywood. Chile is also important.When US prices rise, imports increase. Brazil is the main OSB exporter.
He said the new flood of OSB production will impact all sheathing prices, but he predicted that one-third of the announced mills “will not happen”. OSB’s share of the residential sheathing market is now 72% and is predicted to continue rising.
“The industrial market for plywood is the big one,” he declared. “We have significant needs that can’t be met with OSB.”
Moving to marketing, he strongly advised producers to learn what customers want and to educate the end-users.
Jyrki Pesonen, vision systems manager, Raute Group, New Westminster, BC, explained electronic vision veneer defect detectors and sorting methods employing linescan and matrix/area cameras.
“The higher the resolution, the better the results,” said Mr Pesonen. “And colour is much more helpful.”
Systems enable veneer clipping and grading simultaneously where green end laserbased sensors clip material based on the camera. In patching, a camera defines defects and determines how and where to patch. “The camera is consistent. There is always minor variation on the human side,” Mr Pesonen concluded.
Linear programming is the speciality of Steve Griffith, Optware Solutions, Beaverton, Oregon. He said: “You can quickly get into thousands of variables making it difficult to handle with spreadsheets and other methods.”
Typical of the many variables are log procurement, transporting logs to alternate mills, primary or secondary conversion, sawn lumber or making veneer.
Linear programming helps business product mix – assembling veneer in different ways, allocation/transportation, multiple mills blending multiple raw materials, and minimising manufacturing cost. On the timber side, scheduling timber harvest during the year, according to weather and environmental conditions, can be eased. Investment decisions such as maximising present value and cash flow are an important part.
Mr Griffith explained: “Once your business is modelled it can be optimised to reveal the best potential operating pattern.”
He said the Martco plywood mill in Chopin, Louisiana, has full plant detail. Each process and the entire plant are modelled. The company looks at it for product mixes, the single most important factor on the bottom line. Georgia-Pacific Corp, he said, optimises its orders to plan production for its 18 mills.
“Everything is tied to the price of oil,” warned Jim Wilson, professor emeritus, OSU, “and environmental policy is mandating emission control which can substantially increase use of natural gas and electricity,” [Editor’s note: oil prices passed US$60 per barrel at mid-year.]
He said the price range is enormous for fuel, depending on such factors as location and negotiations. It all boils down to the fact that energy plays an increasingly important role in production costs.
Emission controls can increase gas consumption by 150% and electricity costs by 30%, all without producing any more products. In plywood production, this additional load is principally in controlling emissions from dryers and boilers.
Professor Wilson had some tips to conserve energy:

Columbia Forest Products, with headquarters in Portland, Oregon, is the largest hardwood plywood and hardwood veneer producer in the US and the firm keeps ‘hopping’ to produce new products and processes to hold its commanding lead of 40% of that segment of the nation’s business.
Columbia, formed in 1957, and its subsidiaries, has 18 mills in the US and Canada employing 4,000 people. One of the more interesting and one of the older is at Klamath Falls in southern Oregon. It peels and dries its own softwood white fir inner plies from local timber. Columbia’s well-known hardwood faces come not only from its own and other mills in the eastern half of the US and Canada, but also from tropical dry veneer suppliers overseas. The mill uses some 50 different species of decorative overlays.
Columbia is the first to transition to soy-based exterior formaldehyde-free resins in a partnership with Hercules and Oregon State University which researched the product.
Kaichang Li, an OSU researcher, was intrigued with organic-based adhesives after studying the tenacity of mussels in sticking to rocks in sea shallows. Their secret is an adhesive protein containing a high amount of polymeric amino acids. He said it is one of the strongest and the most water-resistant natural adhesives and concluded that formaldehyde-free wood adhesive systems could be developed.
The soy resin start-up has been gradual, using a portable mixer on limited shifts; the company will install a new glue loft dedicated to the soy product. Product testing has been performed at several institutions throughout the US and boil and wet shear tests have proved to be much better than UF bonds.
Columbia has begun to switch to the soy based adhesive for three of its allveneer-core panel plants and plans to have all the other mills converted by next year.
Softwood logs to be peeled for inner plies are trucked to the log dump. A cherry picker supplies the deck feeding the Kochums 30in ring debarker, which offbears to the chains feeding the five 50in Kochums chop-saw installation which saws them to peeler lengths.
Next stop is the hot water vats for eight to 12 hours. The block core temperature goal is 120oF (49oC). Winter temperatures are cold and frozen logs are quite common and may require a longer vat schedule.
Next is the Coe 8ft lathe installation, which includes a Coe 790 charger, 1380 core drive and 33⁄4in roller bar and a McDiarmid six-sensor laser unit.
The line can peel 13 blocks per minute down to 33⁄4in. Average block diameter approaches 10in. The line produces 30,000fpm, 3⁄8in basis, using 3,000 blocks per shift,  operating two 10-hour shifts daily. There are five semi-close-coupled trays with a maximum speed of 1,200fpm followed by an automatic Durand Raute clipper and a three-bin automatic stacker for heart, sap, and mix.
The mill uses only the 50in material. The strip is sorted manually and sold.
The green veneer is then fork-lifted to the dry-end building where it is married to the hardwood faces which are Columbia’s stock-in-trade. This building houses drying, upgrading, lay-up, pressing, sawing, sanding, bundling and shipping.
The mill’s venerable hand-fed steam dryer was shut down last August after 40 years of service.
The other two Keller high-velocity gasfired dryers have been recently upgraded, including an AKI extension on one. Scanners, a Raute VDA defect analyzer and a stacker are soon to be added. Sweed feeders serve both units.
Seven of the nine Raimann patchers are mounted in a production line and two Hashimoto and one Precision Energy Services string composers assemble solid sheets.
Two Globe and one Dieffenbacher spreaders serve the 5 x 10ft, 24-opening SparTek, and Baldwin 4 x 8ft 30-opening steam-heated presses. One has an automatic stacker and the others are manual. A Rockwell automatic control serves the Globe pre-press.
The computerised Schwabedissen saws are fully enclosed, as is the operator, to protect against noise.
The Timesavers sander has floating heads, three on top and four on the bottom. An add-on was end- and edge-sanders. A Signode automatic strapping line serves the automatic stacker and corrugated cardboard covers the loads and the top cover has a company logo.
Plant operations manager Mark Slezak said: “We have a total employment here of 415, of which 10% are salaried or management. This is an ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) company and we’re quite safety conscious.” The 2004 OSA incident rate was just 1.0 compared with the industry average low of 5.0.
Mr Slezak said: “Our biggest objective is to run the plant five days a week. If we can do that with an occasional Saturday, everything else will fall into place. The market is strong enough. It’s a matter of imports that are causing something resembling a soft market. We run four days or five, and occasionally six. If we could run a consistent five days and add that sixth day it would be ideal.
“We’ve always been a speciality operation. We’re trying to carve out a niche within the niche. One of the things we have added is to be FSC certified and using no added-formaldehyde resins, along with smaller sizes and quantities.”
Mr Slezak concluded: “We have lots of plans for this year and next year. This was probably the biggest year we have ever had for processes and new products. We expect next year to be very busy, too.”
Another unusual aspect of the Columbia operation is its partial use of wheat straw fibreboard for core. This is through a partnership agreement with Dow BioProducts to use the firm’s WOODSTALK product. It is made with pMDI resin, which produces a strong, moisture resistant, lightweight product with limited VOC emissions.
Medium density overlay (MDO) plywood is an important product for Columbia, particularly for painted signs. The overlay is fused with the wood fibres. With 28% resin content the surface has high resistance to weathering, wear and water. It takes paint well for signage.
Interestingly, a popular Columbia product is Pacific Northwest alder-faced plywood. Once considered a weed species, the veneer provides a consistent light grain pattern with no heartwood-sapwood grain boundary.

Wood supplies are changing for many US plywood mills and so it is for Boise Cascade’s Elgin, Oregon operation. It has another distinction in that it successfully produces 94% sheathing in the face of a general trend to steer away from that product in favour of  specialised panels. Competition from OSB has fuelled that trend. The mill produces about  235 million ft2, 3⁄8in basis, annually.
Elgin is dipping its toe into pine, targeting 7in to 12in smalldiameter logs. Pine log prices are more reasonable and Elgin will substitute it for white fir, for inner plies and backs.
The mill has peeled mainly Douglas fir, white fir, and spruce. Region engineer Jared Rogers said: “White fir used to be considered a weed by our foresters, but we could use more of it today. The pine is left, so we’re going to find a use for it – at least for core, if not faces and backs. It frees up the white fir for our stud mill.”
The mill complex has a log utilisation centre for barking and bucking. The plywood and stud mills complement each other quite well, with oversize and undersize logs going for studs (2in x 4in vertical members for timber wall frames). “It gives us better recovery,” said Mr Rogers. “We get the entire product out of the log. The bark goes to hog fuel, chips to our paper mill, and sawdust and shavings to our particleboard plant.”
The plywood plant has considerable steam needs for its dryers, presses, and hot water vats. It shares two 60,000lb/hour Keeler boilers with Boise’s adjoining stud mill which  uses steam for its dry kilns.
The utilisation centre has Nicholson A5, 35in and A3, 27in, ring debarkers, along with six 6ft Boise-designed chop saws on each side. Either side can make veneer or stud blocks, depending on quality and straightness.
A 78in Black Clawson whole log chipperhandles lily pads (log ends) and scrap.
Blocks entering the plywood line are kicked into bins from where they either go to inventory or to nine hot water vats designed by Boise. Most of the stud logs move directly on chains into the stud mill.
The log centre runs on a five-day week, while the plywood mill runs seven days.
Pine peeling has resulted in log conditioning changes: Douglas fir and larch spend 10 to 12 hours in the vats to reach a core temperature of 120oF (49oC). However, 85oF (29oC) after two hours’ vat time does it for the pine, which lays flat with limited wrinkling as it advances through the mill.
Blocks proceed through a Coe 790 charger with x-y positioning and a Coe 1390 core drive for the Coe-controlled Premier VL50 8ft lathe, which peels a maximum diameter of 27in (69cm). It has a large roller bar and clipping trash gate.
Peeled veneer offbears to one of three 100ft primary trays and then progresses to the Ventek scanner and Raute clipper. Four Raute bins automatically stack 54s while 27s go to the green chain, as do strips on two strip trays from the clipper.
An Acrowood chipper handles the residues, while an inventory area stores veneer awaiting drying.
The plant has three steam-heated veneer dryers: A Raute three-zone, four-deck, 20- section jet dryer; a Coe two-zone, eightdeck, 20-section longitudinal dryer; and a Moore two-zone, six-deck, 16-section longitudinal dryer. The longitudinal dryers are both split-feed so two different items can be dried at the same time on each dryer.
The Raute jet dryer is a 1998 model which handles 54s only and is equipped with a Raute automatic feeder, unloader, and moisture detector and a Ventek automatic grade scanner, ahead of a Raute eight-bin automatic stacker.
The Coe dryer, which is over 30 years old but has been rebuilt twice, unloads through Elliot Bay brush moisture detectors. The bottom five decks process 54s, which transfer to a Raute eight-bin stacker, while the top three decks process random-width material, graded and sorted by hand.
Both of the eight-bin stackers have Raute automatic unloading systems.When a bin accumulates a full load it rolls out on to a cart to go to the forklift pick-up area.
The Moore dryer is 40 years old but has also been rebuilt twice. It is used to dry fishtail, random, or 54s as required. The most recent rebuild included a Grenzebach AKIdesigned insulated steel floor.
“It’s amazing how much heat that concrete used to suck up, because our production jumped significantly,” said production manager Greg Howard.
All emissions from the three dryers are routed to a Pro-Environmental Inc thermal/ catalytic oxidiser, or TCO, installed in 2003; the unit destroys more than 95% of the VOCs coming from the dryers.
After dry inventory, the material moves over to the lay-up line, a Superior five-station installation employing foam glue in a SparTek system. This produced glue savings of more than 20%, according to Mr Rogers.
A Coe carousel stacker after lay-up accumulates the panels ready for pressing in one of the three press lines with a total of 90 openings. “There are normally no problems in getting the wood into a press before the glue can dry out,” said Mr Rogers.
Globe pre-presses serve the three steamheated 4ft x 8ft presses: a Williams-White 30-opening,Williams-White 36-opening, and a Merritt 24-opening.
A Kimwood five-bin grade sorting line follows the presses, where panels are sized, graded, banded, and stencilled for shipment.
A Timesavers top sander does some touch work and a Globe tongue-and-groove machine processes occasional orders.

Established only in 2001, the Baltic Furniture group, BBG, headquartered in Lithuania, claims to be “one of the most booming furniture companies in Lithuania” with ambitions to become a leader in the European arena.
Until recently, the group comprised four manufacturing companies, which exported around 98% of their production. The fourth and most recent member of the group was Latvian particleboard maker Bolderaja, though as we shall see, that company was sold in July this year.
AB Freda, one of the founding companies of the BBG group and located in the town of Kaunas, makes furniture from particleboard coated with various surface films, as well as with painted finishes, and specialises in living room furniture such as cupboards, chests of drawers, beds and shelves. The factory was extended and new machinery purchased last year, with further expansion planned for this year.
AB Dilikas is located in Klaipéda on the west coast of Lithuania and makes furniture from wood-veneered particleboard and solid pine with UV finishes; it aims to make 52% of its products from solid wood this year.
JSC Wood Team Production has its factory in Vievis, between Kaunas and Vilnius,and specialises in solid wood furniture manufactured from pine and birch and hasa new birch sawmill together with drying and processing, to guarantee its supply ofsuitable raw material.
In mid-2004, BBG crossed the border and acquired Latvian particleboard manufacturer
Bolderaja, one of the largest wood processing enterprises in Latvia.
A series of investments throughout the BBG group in 2003 in new technology, factory premises, staff and quality improvements boosted sales volume from LTL100m (US$176m) to LTL193m and in 2004, sales growth almost doubled.
That acquisition of Bolderaja, whose factory is located close to the Latvian capital Riga, gave the group an assured supply of particleboard and at the same time offered it a buffer against price fluctuations in the market.
Bolderaja makes particleboard in various thicknesses and to E1 grade. It also applies melamine facing to the raw board and manufactures the melamine edgebanding.
Flooring grade is also a speciality.
The newest venture for Bolderaja under BBG ownership was a move into furniture manufacture at the end of 2004, producing simple melamine-faced particleboard cabinets. The plan of BBG was that furniture would represent 30% of the company’s total sales volume this year, in line with the ambitions of BBG group in furniture production at all its factories.
However, on July 25 this year, BBG sold Bolderaja to Kronospan Holdings Ltd of Nikosia, Cyprus.

Boise Cascade Company, now known simply as Boise, and formerly Boise Cascade Corporation, continues to advance its wood panel manufacturing operations in the Pacific  Northwest of the US. The company was reorganised last year.
The firm’s LaGrande, Oregon, particleboard plant has accomplished such projects as  continued press upgrades, sander upgrades, new grading systems, new regenerative  thermal oxidiser (RTO) air quality control, improved process control, computerised  maintenance management, and an innovative new product.
These measures have all helped to maintain efficient saleable productivity, even during slack markets. For example, before the upgrading there were separate former operators,  but now it is all controlled from the press station.
Maintenance superintendent Steve Schlegel said: “The press work consisted of hydraulic closing arms, four-corner platen levelling, new trays and loaders and newdesign pusher bars. Higher pump volume increased closing speeds; pressing to position instead of stops saves much time when changing runs and the old shims took time to change.”
They also replaced one press base.
An Argos grading system from Kongsberg, Norway, brought more quality control using high intensity xenon lamps and cameras. Lateral light illuminates the panels on both sides and the shadows cast feed the computer with information.
Air density separators were installed on one of the two lines.
Craig Zollman, manufacturing superintendent, said: “We pay great attention to our environment and environmental controls. Probably the biggest challenge in particleboard right now is environmental standards.”
Boise installed an RTO two years ago to treat emissions, while dust is filtered through 28 bag houses throughout the mill.
Mr Zollman continued: “We have put a really high focus on establishing data collection so we can be a lot more consistent with our pressing strategies.We’ve implemented at least a dozen quality in-process checks, reducing defect which potentially could slip through by at least 85%. Most of these are manual checks, from every half-hour to every hour. Technical director Morgan Olson and his crew help audit that process once a month when they evaluate all the checks. This benefits our customers and makes us better.”
Regarding production, Mr Zollman’s comments were simple: “We make good board and make as much as we can.”
Boise calls its new product Boise Select, used principally for moulding and cabinetry. At 491⁄2lb, it’s of a heavier density, has no voids in the core and no noticeable transition from face to core. It will accept some fairly severe profiles, according to Mr Zollman, and can be foil or laminate covered.
Mr Schlegel continued: “In 2000 we instituted a computerised maintenance management system. It automatically prints out work orders. It really helped us to find our problem spots and reduce our unscheduled down time.We take about six hours on Wednesdays on line 2. And we do our line 1 maintenance on Sundays. The main maintenance crew works Sunday to Thursday.
Mr Zollman said: “One of the reasons we’ve been successful, particularly in tough market conditions, is our ability to continue to run and experience minimal down time.” Raw material comes from throughout the Pacific Northwest, but the company’s nearby plywood and sawmills furnish a good share. Most is shavings and sawdust and some plywood trims.
The mill has a Phelps truck dump with an operator who controls in which of the three buildings the furnish is placed. Each line has a separate building and green furnish goes to the third from local suppliers who dump their own trucks.
The furnish is separated by species, introduced into the process at different ratios. The furnish bins hold three 24-hour capacities of material. One front-end loader feeds the hoppers in all three buildings.
A conveyor takes material from two of the storage buildings to the dryers, while the green material from the third building goes to a silo serving the MEC pre-dryer. Separate milling and drying buildings serve each line.
On line 1 the material goes through an air density separator to a screen separating out fines and overs. The heavy material is handled in a 36in Jeffrey hog. Fines go straight to the dryer while intermediates go to Bauer double disc refiners. With two dryers on each line – Heil on 1, and MEC triple-pass 60ft long, 13ft diameter on 2 – the material goes to the appropriate core or face dryer.
An 8ft x 10ft x 15ft dry storage bin holds material on line 1 while on line 2 the material goes to Rotex shaker screens; two for face and another pair for core. Overs are hogged, intermediates go to Bauer refiners, and fines go right to the dryers.
GreCon and Pyroguard systems protect blowpipes with spark detectors and deluge systems. The maintenance team, headed by Steve Schlegel, works closely with Factory Mutual Global to ensure that fire systems are inspected frequently to provide continuous protection for employees and property.
Next is a Crossfield weigh-scale and two Littleford blenders using Hexion (formerly Borden) UF resin. A Hexion plant is located beside the mill and resin is piped  underground to the Boise mill. They also use Hexion wax and catalyst.
The blended furnish goes into Sunds Classiformers for metering on to a continuous belt which carries the mat up through the Washington Iron Works pre-press for 21⁄2 seconds to the WPS saws just ahead of the press where the belt rolls under, returning under the line.
On line 1, panels go to a 14-panel loader, which transfers them to the Washington Iron Works 5ft x 18ft, 14-opening press. It produces thicknesses from 5⁄16in to 13⁄16in. Line 2 has a 4ft x 24ft 14-opening press.
Mr Zollman said he has had more requests for metric sizes, with perhaps 1% of production in metric. The different thicknesses are much easier to change than when pressing to stops. He added: “We used to have four to six people on each side of the press for each stop change. Press upgrades have eliminated the need for stop changes. We don’t miss stop changes at all. It could take from 12 to 15 minutes – lost production time – for each stop change.”
Pressed panels go to the Washington Iron Works unloader, followed by a wicket line going through a cooling chamber. Line 1 full panels go out to a stacker for sanding and Jenkins sawing with a capability to make 36 separate cuts, while line 2 production goes through a Jenkins saw for cut-tosize, followed by sanding on an eight-head IMEAS using 40-60-80-100 grit sequence. Mr Zollman said the sander has been a  great upgrade for the facility, saying Fred Kurpiel originally introduced the system here. The mill uses Norton abrasives.
Line 1 has a six-head Kimwood sander using 50-60-100 grit.
The Argos sorting system automatically scans both faces of each panel and sorts into bins for grade separation.
Next is a Signode strapping line – plastic strapping is popular with Boise’s customers. One end of the mill has a covered loading area for six railroad cars. One truck can be loaded in one area and two trucks can be covered in another in-plant area. Drivers use a harness system, anchored from above, to protect against falls from atop the load and product is shipped throughout the US, Canada and Mexico.
Some output is re-manufactured into counter tops, shelving, stair treads and cutto-size. Edges are filled and an edge coat applied, while shelving and treads are bullnosed. There is no laminating. “There are so many laminators out there,” Mr Zollman declared.
The mill has streamlined its production and salaried force to 140 for its three-shift operation. Depending on orders, it runs five-day or seven-day weeks and is a union mill.
There is a high focus on employee involvement, especially in mill safety performance.
Mr Zollman said: “Production has to take second seat to keeping people safe. We ask employees to monitor other employees and encourage safe working practices. It changes morale when employees are part of the process. We want employees involved in everything we do and safety is most definitely the first priority. We value safety and we expect our employees to value safety as well,” he emphasised.
“We’ll shut something down to fix it if there is any chance someone could get hurt. That’s where we’re following the lead of Tom Stephens, our new ceo. Employees are empowered to shut down equipment if they think there’s a potential for injury. Culture change hasn’t been a bad thing for any of us.”
The mill has standard operating procedures for all its operations, such as start-ups and shut-downs.

When Canadian structural panel manufacturer Grant Forest Products Inc announced in June that it planned to build two greenfield OSB mills in South Carolina, it brought the number of new plants or major capacity expansions in the North American structural panels industry announced so far this year to eight.
Most industry watchers expect some of these projects to fall by the wayside, but add together the total volumes of the confirmed or very likely new mills and major expansions (excluding two potential mills in British Columbia and the Chatham Forest Products project in New York, all of which Ainsworth’s Lumber Co Ltd is considering launching) and North America is looking at around eight billion ft2 of additional OSB capacity in 2008, by when most economists, within and outside the industry, expect the North American housing market to have receded from the record highs of 2004.
Forest industry analysts in the US and Canada, concerned about the effect on share values of companies heavily exposed to OSB, have questioned whether the sector has any self-restraint. At the very least, it seems to be fuelling its ‘feast and famine’ reputation, and the surge in capacity is likely to slash OSB prices from the healthy levels seen in 2004 and much of this year.

In the past several years since Simpson Timber Company’s venerable Shelton, Washington plywood plant was sold to Olympic Panel Products big things have happened all through the busy production lines – including a large production boost.
As Simpson gradually pared down its six plywood facilities to just the Shelton operation, it consolidated Shelton, which became the world’s largest overlay facility under one roof. And that roof covers 10 acres.
The plant wasn’t actually up for sale, but several potential owners approached Simpson, including Atlas Holdings, Greenwich, Connecticut, which added 120 people to the payroll after buying the mill two years ago.
Plant manager Frank Langenberg said: “We bought the equipment and leased the building and land for 14 years.We buy services, such as steam, from Simpson.We share common area maintenance and consolidated rail service. [Simpson still operates a large adjoining sawmill]. This is a union operation and we have a common labour agreement.
“On our product mix we are still on the same track as Simpson.We use 72 different overlays, mostly Dynea phenolic paper. About a year ago we increased our production by about 45%.We have probably taken a more aggressive approach in our marketing. We export 8% to 10% of our volume with sales to Canada, Central America, the UK and minor amounts to the Pacific Rim.”
Most of the sales staff work out of Shelton, but there is a representative in Florida. Surprisingly, this is not because of building storm damage caused by hurricanes, but because of so many US ‘baby boomers’ retiring there and seeking housing.
Mr Langenberg said sheathing is a byproduct, commenting: “Last year when the sheathing market was running wild, we did look for opportunities, but we did not back away from our core overlay business as some did.”
Olympic buys only log grades specific for its uses. It looks at many dry veneer species that will meet overlay requirements. This includes softwoods, domestic hardwoods and offshore species.
General manager Fran Eck told WBPI: “We have put a good deal of money into the mill since 2003. The scanning and stacking systems are state-of-the-art. We were the first in the world to put in a VDR computer system to grade for roughness. Now we have the third generation of the machine.We use that to measure roughness not only for inner plies, but also for faces for the overlays. It’s a great tool for helping us control our field quality and panel quality. It’s much more accurate than hand grading.
“On our lathe line we put in new scanning and a clipper system to improve recovery and quality. Our veneer-programming model gives us more insight. It can take millions of variables where the human mind can take only a few.”
He said panel defect analysis does a lot for the operation, with two units on each of the saw lines; only 10 panels out of 2.5 million came back last year.
“Our tolerances are probably the tightest in the industry,” Mr Eck said. “We size our panels to tolerances of 0.005in or less.
He has 37 process control teams throughout the mill, working with an employee roll of 320. There can be anywhere from one person on a team to l8 or 20. The largest team is lay-up. Simpson started the system in 2001. The new owners saw value and took it to another level.
They have a CCI (customer complaint investigation) process. After all the information is written up, the appropriate team discusses it and provides feedback to the customer. This could include a phone call from someone on the mill floor.
Mechanised lay-up is more adapted to long runs of a particular product. It would have marginal value for such a specialized operation as Olympic’s, but the innovative Mr Eck said: “I would never say never about a lay-up line, although it might not be your standard lay-up line. A few years ago you would never say you could grade veneer with cameras. There’s technology out there, but it’s a matter of how to integrate with our raw material.”
Olympic operates entirely on purchased logs, mostly from within 50 miles, but a few rafts have come from Canada this year. Most of the logs come from Green Diamond Resources (Simpson’s timber management company) and the Washington Department of Natural Resources. Douglas fir is preferred, but the mill also uses hemlock and other softwoods.
The company’s timber buyer looks at many timber sales to learn what’s available and when it gets sold.
Logs are dry decked and only about three weeks of inventory is kept on hand. Cat 988 and 950 machines handle logs and blocks.
A Nicholson ring barker is followed by Nicholson circular chop saws producing block lengths. Then they go to the 12 hot water vats for about an hour per diameterinch. The goal is a 130oF (54oC) at the core.
The mill has a Coe 10ft lathe, but this is used only about 10% of the time.
The eight feet Coe 247 lathe is the main veneer production unit. Mr Langenberg said: “It has all the state-of-the-art equipment – Coe 784 x-y charger, power roller bars, power back-up roll, hydraulic carriage and an Elite Automation 32-scanner system. The concentrated camera array produces highly accurate block orientation for peeling. The mill uses logs in the 6in to 30in diameter range, but the average log diameter for the first half of the year was 9.5in.
Common veneer thicknesses are 1⁄8in and 1⁄10in with some 1⁄6in peeled.
Three 100ft trays feed the Raute rotary clipper, preceded by a Ventek Vision camera system and moisture meter. The 54s, wides, and half-sheets proceed to the Raute  automatic five-bin stacker while strip and random goes to a manual green chain. The green end has three moisture sorts to maximize dryer efficiency.
The mill has three older, but rebuilt, Coe dryers and a newer Raute dryer. All are equipped with Delta T controls which continually monitor veneer moisture content, temperature and timing during drying.
The veneer is graded and stacked and then can be dispatched to the presses, or inventory, to Raimann patching, or to composing on the 8ft Raute or 10ft Hashimoto.
Globe spreaders first feed the Globe prepresses and then the panels are loaded into the presses, all with American loaders and unloaders.
A Williams-White 4ft x 10ft 24-opening press is a specialised installation for overlays, however one-step pressing can be done on all three presses. The others are Williams-White 5ft x 10ft, 30-opening and a big Williams-White 4ft x 8ft, 50-opening which occasionally produces sheathing in a good market.
Production is in three to 15 plies and thicknesses from 5⁄16in to 11⁄2in.
In addition to mediumand high-density overlays, the mill uses phenolic surface film and, of course, its hardwood face stock.
After one run through the press, two-step panel blanks are sized by a Globe saw. A Raute polyurethane patch line and Kimwood six-head tight-tolerance sander follows, and offbears to five sorting bins. The sanders first two heads are opposing, to size to the proper thickness. The two top and bottom heads clean up the panels. To limit noise, the sander is completely enclosed. From the sander, the panels go either to a Raute film press or back to the 24-opening press.
After passing through Globe saws, panels go through an Ultrasonic Arrays bond analyser, through a stencil spray booth or oiler and on to the two Signode strapping stations.
Two indoor rail spurs each hold two cars for loading. There is a van loading area and indoor and outdoor truck loading. The mill ships the equivalent of six rail cars daily.