As reported in WBPI’s August/September issue, the European Federation of the Plywood Industry (FEIC) held its annual meeting alongside that of the European Panel Federation (EPF) in Riga, Latvia in June.
This was only the second time that these two independent associations had held their meetings at the same venue and time and the FEIC’s comprehensive annual report, delivered on that occasion, offered an excellent opportunity to look more closely at this important sector of the European panel industry.
Like its counterpart the EPF, the FEIC does not claim to represent the whole European manufacturing industry, but it does cover a significant proportion of production, especially in the EU states, and is continually increasing its membership, with companies from non-EU states such as Russia joining up.
Members of the FEIC are not just individual panel producing companies but include national associations such as the Finnish Forest Industries Federation, the Swedish Federation of Wood and Furniture Industry and France’s Union des Fabricants de Panneaux de Contraplaqué (association of plywood manufacturers) as examples.
The administrative structure, or secretariat, of the FEIC is largely shared with the EPF; both federations are housed in the same building in Brussels and Kris Wijnendaele is secretary general of both.
Plywood producing countries with companies represented by the federation are Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the Ukraine.
At the time of the AGM, 13 companies from Turkey were expected to join the FEIC, through their national association.
Of these countries, Russia has the largest installed capacity at 2,235,000m3, followed by Finland with 1,350,000m3, France with 570,000m3 and Italy with 450,000m3 (all as at the end of 2004). The smallest producer nation is Slovenia at 10,000m3.
However, utilisation of that capacity varies from 100% in Russia and Finland to 72% in France, 92% in Italy and 66% in Slovenia.
In 2004, the FEIC member companies “were able to continue their non-stop growth pattern in terms of production,” said Nicola Reni in his address to the open part of the federation’s annual meeting in Riga. He reported that within the member countries, plywood production increased by 2.9% to reach a new record of 3.8 million m3.
Finland put in a strong performance, as did France, particularly with what Mr Reni described as its “dynamic coniferous plywood sector”.
On the other side of the coin, Italy was forced to close some important poplar plywood mills in early 2004, losing some 14.5% of its total national capacity in the process.
As reported in the news pages of WBPI on a number of occasions in the recent past, imports of okoumé plywood from China have caused considerable distress over the last four years to the European producers, who cannot begin to compete with the prices of these products. It is particularly hard as okoumé plywood is normally situated at the higher end of the European market.
It is in this kind of situation that federations such as the FEIC can show their true value to the industry. It took up the plywood producers’ case with the European Commission (EC), lodging a complaint in July 2003, and this led to the start of an official anti-dumping investigation by the EC in August.
The result of this was that the EC imposed anti-dumping duties of up to 48.5% against all Chinese exporters on May 17, 2004. Four Chinese companies which cooperated with the investigation were however granted reduced duties of between 8.5 and 23.9%.
The investigations of the EC continued for a further six months and resulted in an increase in duty to 66.7%.
However, this did not provide the ‘fix’ the European plywood manufacturers had hoped for. “Indeed the Chinese exporters are very inventive in finding solutions to circumvent these duties,” said Mr Reni.
One such ‘solution’, he said, is to ship the plywood to Europe under a different name such as ‘redwood plywood’.
This is all happening against a back-drop of generally rising plywood imports to Europe. “Even though the imports of officially declared okoumé plywood dropped during 2004, imports of plywood in general continued to increase at a stunning pace and more than doubled in 2004 compared with 2003, up to nearly 300,000m3,” said Mr Reni.
These included new Chinese plywood products such as bintangor, kedongkong and red canarium, as well as film-faced.
“Therefore, the FEIC is investigating the possibility of a new anti-dumping complaint,” the president told the meeting.
But the FEIC is not just concerned with unfair imports threatening its members’ businesses. It is also involved in efforts to improve their products’ position in the market.
Thus the federation considers CE marking as an important proof of the quality of construction plywood and is therefore advocating the full implementation of the Construction Products Directive, in particular the harmonised standard EN13986. It also  strongly opposes the efforts by any EU member states to “create or maintain technical barriers to the trade in construction plywood.” By this Mr Reni means national standards being given precedence over EUapproved ones.
In other areas of standardisation, the president said that the new European standard EN 12369-2 is an important and very useful tool for architects, designers and engineers, because it gives them tabulated characteristic values for use in the design calculations for their structures. These values are based on the bending strength classes established in the new version of the specification standard EN 636 for plywood.
In Riga, Kris Wijnendaele announced that the FEIC is to look at the developments in trade flows – especially imports from non-EU countries – and to assess their impact on the industry’s competitiveness.
The FEIC also represents the diminishing blockboard industry in Europe, whose production fell 4.4% in 2004 versus 2003, to 256,000m3. In 1999 it stood at 306,000m3.
It is still produced in 12 FEIC member countries with Germany being the largest producer at 139,600m3 in 2004.
The FEIC’s published annual report also gives information in what it terms ‘Special country fact files’.
According to this information, Brazil’s Association for Mechanically Processed Timber reported a significant increase in plywood production in 2004, reaching 3.8 million m3 – 18% up on 2003. Exports established a new record at 2.9 million m3, with 65% of that export figure being in pine plywood and 35% in tropical timber.
Turning to China, production increased more than 100% in the four years to 2005, going from nine million m3 in 2001 to 21 million m3 today. This growth has been based on imported tropical species logs from South East Asia and Africa and softwood logs from New Zealand and Russia.
Tropical plywood production in China rose 10% to 4.4 million m3 in 2004.
India reportedly has more than 2,000 small-scale plywood production units, accounting for 1.76 million m3 of production in 2004 – all from tropical logs, nearly all of which are imported.
Indonesia’s plywood industry, on the other hand, is in decline due to the decline in its forest resources, stricter enforcement of logging regulations and falling competitiveness. Production fell from 6.7 million m3 in 2003 to 6.4 million m3 in 2004.
Japan has 50 plywood producers (and two for blockboard) and produced 4% more plywood in 2004 than 2003, rising to 3.15 million m3.
Malaysia produced 4.8 million m3 in 2004, up nearly 8% on 2003 and the highest output level ever achieved. More than 85% is exported. The industry employs 60,000 people in 177 mills.
Romania increased its plywood production by over 33% in 2004, to just over 104,000m3, with a big new poplar plywood mill being opened by the Romply company in Calarasi early last year.
According to the APA-The engineered wood association in North America, total softwood plywood production in the US was 13 million m3 in 2004. The FEIC annual report does not list Canada.

Llandudno, on the coast of north Wales, once again supplied unseasonably warm, and dry, spring-like weather as over 100 delegates assembled from 28 countries at the North Wales Conference Centre for the three days of the ninth EPPS.
They came from South East Asia, Japan, China, Africa, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand, North and South America and all areas of Europe to learn about the latest developments in five sessions covering: OSB; Technology; Challenges for the industry; The built environment; and Fundamentals.
Encouragingly, this year more than 25% of those delegates were there representing panel manufacturing companies – an increase on previous years as this symposium becomes increasingly popular for its mix of scientific, technical and more ‘commercial’ presentations.
Opening the symposium, Dr Paul Fowler, head of organisers the BioComposites Centre of the University of Wales, Bangor, reflected on a rather tumultuous year for his organisation, due to redevelopment of buildings at the university.
“We’ve moved offices and are currently engaged in a major capital project to  reinvigorate our flagship MDF pilot line in a new facility on the island of Anglesey.We also plan an engineered wood products test plant at the same location,” said Dr Fowler.
He also informed delegates of the installation of a multi-purpose reactor vessel at the Anglesey base to carry out resin development and to scale up resin process improvements from the laboratory.
“In more general terms, the formaldehyde question remains and we are working on formaldehyde-free bio-based resins with performance to equal petrochemical-based resins.
“The EC Incineration Directive – to burn or not to burn – is an important topic too. Should we as an industry be lobbying to ban the [indiscriminate] burning of wood products?”.
Making a welcome return as keynote speaker was the former head of the BioComposites Centre (he left five years ago) and now with Ensis in Australia, Dr Jamie Hague.
“Ensis is a trans-Tasman team joint venture led from Victoria, Australia combining Australia’s CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation) and Scion, which is the trading name of the New Zealand Forest Research Institute.
“The joint venture is a combination of Australasia’s two leading forest research agencies’ talents and resources,” said Dr Hague. “It is a world-scale operation, not just operating in Australasia, with 325 scientific and technical staff. It is the doorway to the entire CSIRO and Scion network of research.”
Looking at the major challenges facing the wood processing industry, the speaker highlighted resource quality and variability, the product development cycle (longer than it is for steel, plastics and concrete) and environmental impact, particularly with regard to preservation treatments and volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
“It takes 25 years to know if you got your tree breeding right and about 10 years to test wood protection systems,” pointed out Dr Hague, who also highlighted product robustness and changing consumer expectations as challenges to be faced.
Looking at the future prospects for engineered wood products or EWPs (in which he includes all panel product types as well as LVL), the speaker said that he felt Australasia has an uncertain future, with further rationalisation likely and he cited the imminent takeover of Carter Holt Harvey especially affecting particleboard.
He also suggested that China’s MDF capacity would present tough times and a big threat for the industry.
“Probably the most uncertainty surrounds the future of the MDF industry, in particular that located in New Zealand,” said Dr Hague. “The industry infrastructure is ageing, with few prospects of investment in the near future.
“LVL appears to have a solid future and the plywood industry will likely survive for a number of years.”
Dr Hague said that, in contrast to the Australasian industry, he felt that the global EWP industry potentially has much better prospects.
“The forest industry worldwide faces a number of major challenges. Key issues that remain to be addressed going forward are environmentally acceptable methods of imparting durability to products, minimis-ing or eliminating the emission of  formaldehyde and other potentially harmful VOCs from products and reducing or eliminating the dimensional instability of reconstituted products – that is, the supply of products with consistent, guaranteed properties,” concluded the keynote speaker.
Session 1, simply titled ‘OSB’, was opened by Robert Loth, owner of wood size-reduction machinery maker B Maier of Bielefeld, Germany.
Mr Loth explained how he felt that the use of his company’s new high-speed knife ring flaker and improved cleaning and screening systems to replace hammer milling could be employed to reduce costs while improving board quality in particleboard, with particular reference to the use of recycled wood.
For screening and cleaning, Maier’s system separates the chip flow into five fractions: 0-4mm for burning, 4-8mm bypassing the knife ring flaker to prevent jamming in the flaker, 8-25mm micro-chips, 25-50mm macro-chips and over 50mm to oversize bin.
“The macro-chips are the ones in which the knife-ring flaker produces optimal flakes with high capacity and low energy consumption,” claimed Mr Loth.
The company’s new knife ring flaker has 60 knives instead of the more common 48, a specially developed knife angle and a clear relief angle as well as improved flake flow to produce undamaged flakes and to reduce flaker wear, said the speaker, who also discussed Maier’s unique heavy particle separator incorporating a non-ferrous separator.
Mr Loth said that his two-stage flaking system could produce OSB flakes from all kinds of wood raw material, including recycled, and that he had successfully produced 16mm OSB board in industrial scale tests.
The next speaker was Dr Terry Conners of the University of Kentucky, whose presentation title was ‘The influence of knife angle and ambient temperature on fines generation from knife flakers’.
His research was carried out at a southern pine OSB mill in the US and was concerned with reducing fines for two main reasons: to improve board quality, while increasing production and wood utilisation; and to reduce VOC emissions from dried wood particles.
He found that fines generation could be significantly reduced at the flaker by adjusting sharpness angles as ambient temperature varies.
The reason for these findings is not yet fully understood, admitted Dr Conners, and further research is underway to determine the underlying mechanism.
An interesting paper, which offered the possibility to expand the range of end-uses of OSB into non-commodity areas, was presented by Steffen Tobisch of the Institute for Wood Technology (IHD), Dresden.
Traditionally, moulded furniture parts have been produced from veneer-based products, but what if OSB could replace plywood here as in many other applications?
Dr Tobisch reported success in postmoulding OSB panels in a two-step process by using resin  systems which were not fully cured in the first pressing. This involved a mix of thermoplastic and thermosetting adhesives.
The results were successful and the speaker added that coating during the moulding process – with veneers for example – was also possible.
Next, Paul Bertheras of Mobius Technologies offered a novel use for waste polyurethane foam. He showed that, when mixed with pMDI binder, finely ground PU foam can be used in the bonding system for particleboards.
This not only provides a use for scrap polyurethane foam from trimming at the production sites, as well as cleaned postconsumer scrap foam, but also reduces pMDI consumption.
Promising laboratory results at 10% substitution suggest larger scale tests are worthwhile to determine optimum levels of addition of PU powder to pMDI binder in order to maximise cost reductions, said Mr Bertheras. This may be up to 15 or 20%, he claimed.
On- and off-line characterisation of the structural properties of OSB was the subject of Burkhard Plinke, Fraunhofer WKI, Braunschweig, Germany.
“The quality parameters of OSB are surface homogeneity, density distribution inplane and surface evenness and these are affected by flaking, mat forming and pressing,” explained the speaker.
He then outlined on-the-line mat monitoring by CCD camera with images processed by StrandSize software.With the use of other additional software, orientation angle and ratio can now be continuously monitored and used for process optimisation, said Mr Plinke.
Thermographic inspection of density distribution behind the press and surface topography measurement of the evenness of OSB surfaces were also reported, together with statistical analysis of strand shape parameters. The latter analysis shows the influences of drying and transport processes.
Session 2, ‘Technology’, was kicked off by Jörg Hasener of Fagus-GreCon Greten of Alfeld, Germany.
He described the GreCon equipment available for online ultrasonic measurement for real-time quality control and process optimisation and the company’s new ct- Concept.
‘Service concept for preventive and oncondition maintenance’was presented by Trajan Sandweg of Siempelkamp Maschinen und Anlagenbau, Krefeld, Germany.
Mr Sandweg explained how Siempelkamp’s Prod-IQ process control system has been adapted to a web-based system Prod-IQ.maintenance to allow for the use of process data as a maintenance trigger, with the system receiving information from sensors on the actual state and wear of each sensor-monitored component. This replaces run-to-failure maintenance and periodic preventive maintenance with predictive (on-condition) maintenance, thus reducing downtime and maintenance costs, said Mr Sandweg.
The next speaker was Matthias Fuchs, technical director of Electronic Wood Systems (EWS) of Hameln, Germany.
Pointing out the disadvantages of overor under-drying the raw material for panel production to both quality and economy of manufacture, Mr Fuchs reviewed three  possible systems for moisture measurement: non-contact infra-red; microwave; and resistance-based systems. He also described a new laboratory moisture measurement method employing a dual microwave sensor head with automatic compensation for changes in density and temperature.
The final presentation of the first day of EPPS was given by Lars Karlsson of Tri Innovations AB (TRIAB) of Sweden. ‘Powder coating in the MDF industry’ covered the use of ultra-violet-cured (UV) and ultra-low bake (ULB) application systems.
He explained that UV coating involves melting and curing in separate steps, while ULB is a process of thermosetting/melting, with curing being a product of time and temperature.
The former produces a hard surface suitable even for worktops, while the latter process is more suited to vertical/lower wear applications, he said. Heat impact in ULB can cause problems of cracking in the MDF substrate and in all cases, the internal and surface quality of the MDF is critical.
Day two, session 3: ‘Challenges for the industry’ was opened by Dr John Sharp, who reported on his Advance Resin Technology (ART) for low-emission panels.
He summarised the problems with traditional UF resins, which he claimed have not kept up with other panel production advances and have not been sufficiently predictable in their reactions.
“When using often poor quality and highly variable wood raw material with resultant swings in furnish moisture content etc, the press operator is usually working close to or on the edge. The last thing he needs is variations in the resin as well,” said Dr Sharp. “A radical re-thinking of UF resins was needed.”
Dr Sharp’s ART process is designed to make the resin behave predictably.
“By controlling the process strictly on a time basis throughout the batch production, and by imposing conditions on molar ratio, temperature and pH, the resin has no alternative but to follow a particular, preordained, chemical pathway – it goes where it is told to go,” he said.
Firstly, he sought out more efficient resin performance and secondly he fixed the reaction pathway “so that every time we want to make a particular resin, it will come out exactly the same way. This is ART – a whole new philosophical approach to resin making.”
The next speaker, Stephen Young of TimberTest Laboratories of New Zealand, who also had a booth in the Forum at the symposium, asked: “Formaldehyde emission from solid wood – will it become an issue?” He followed this question with another, related one: “Is there a monster in the forest?”
He tested the formaldehyde release from radiata pine (the mainstay of the New Zealand forest products industry) with Norway spruce and Douglas fir for comparison and concluded that air dried radiate pine gave similar formaldehyde emission to wood from seven other tree species and that results after air drying for all samples was less than a third of the Japanese F**** limit. Sixteen days after high temperature drying, emissions were close to that limit but within one month, reduced to about a third of it.
“There is no monster in the forest,” concluded Mr Young, no doubt to everyone’s relief!
Continuing the emissions theme, Mathias Makowski of BFH, Hamburg, Germany, reported on ‘Influences on VOC emissions of wood based panels’. His work related to OSB.
He found that hot stacking lowered emissions of terpenes, while aldehydes are formed after manufacturing and reach their highest level during stacking, and then decay.
The next presentation was by George Goroyias of Jaakko Pöyry Consulting which, with its sister company ILEX Energy, looked at the implications of bioenergy for the panel industry with regard to the Renewables Obligation.
“The panel industry is the largest consumer of recycled wood, using more than 80% of the current supply, while 180,000 tonnes is used as biofuel by the energy industry,” he said.
Dr Goroyias concluded that, at this early stage of biomass energy development, accurate predictions are difficult, but it is clear that the energy sector could become a significant consumer of wood based and other materials.
Session 4, the built environment, offered three presentations. The first was by professor Michael Benfield on Timber Frame Futures, related to the UK market. He said that the UK Timber Frame Association predicts that 23% of all housing will be timber frame by 2007 (in 1990 it was 5%).
“Timber satisfies the environmental needs of sustainability and is therefore becoming promoted as the preferred material for environmental construction,” said the speaker.
“Perhaps it would be wise for manufacturers and suppliers to become more proactive, partnering members of the overall construction supply chain.”
‘High precision machining of MDF composites’ was presented by Dr Mark Luty, a mechanical design engineer who had tried to build a modular pre-finished housing system using various MDF composite panels.
He concluded that improvements to MDF quality were required and that an MDF/HDF/MDF composite panel was needed, together with a technique which could increase the density of the panel joint interfaces.
Dr Mizi Fan of the Building research Establishment (BRE) in the UK concluded the  session with a report on his work on edge-wise load performance of panels.
The final half-day of EPPS 9 brought session 5: Fundamentals.
The first presentation, by Jo Mattheij of DSM Melamine, was on the instability of MUF resins. He concluded that it is possible to develop ultra-stable MUF resins by adjusting pH and controlling optimum condensation times.
Next came ‘Optimisation of wood based panel properties by heat pre-treatment’, by Wulf Paul of BFH.
The objective was to improve thickness swell and weathering characteristics of panels for use in exterior applications. Mr Paul found that heat pre-treatment of particleboard chips did give improved thickness swell and absorption behaviour with good technical properties too. Reduced strength of the chips was compensated by the use of pMDI adhesives and Mr Paul said that the process was also suitable for the manufacture of OSB.
Professor Joseph Tesha of the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, returned to EPPS for his third presentation (previous ones were in 2000 and 2001) and reported on his work on the effectiveness of both steam and alkali treatments of rice husks used in particleboard manufacture in improving adhesion.
He found that alkali treatment improves the internal bond strength and flexural strength by partial removal of impurities from the rice husk surface, as long as alkali concentrations were below 2%. Steam treatment also improved mechanical properties by 30 to 300%.
Dr Milan Sernek from Slovenia looked at the influence of press temperature on curing and strength of MUF bonds and found that increased press temperature accelerates the curing process and shear strength, allowing reduced pressing times.
The final presentation of this year’s symposium was given by Kristoffer Segerholm from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, on wood-plastic composites made from acetylated wood and its effects on water vapour absorption behaviour and durability.
Delegates left Llandudno with a wealth of information to take back to their daily working lives in their far-flung homelands. Whether those delegates came from universities, equipment suppliers, resin makers or panel manufacturers, they must all have learned a lot of useful things during the two-and-half day symposium, as well as establishing lasting contacts and networking opportunities with others in the industry. Next year, EPPS will celebrate its 10th edition (October 11-13, 2006).

Headquartered in Schwarzach, near the western border of Austria, Schelling has been in business for a long time – in fact, since 1917 when it was founded by Georg Schelling. It went into the manufacture of sawing machines in 1958, producing its first automatic cut-to-size plant 10 years later.
Having steadily expanded throughout the world, including establishing a sales and service centre, Schelling North America, in the US, the company became a well-known name for supplying the complex angular sawing systems increasingly in demand by the panel industry.
From 1996, Schelling went through different development phases – including a time under the ownership of Biesse of Italy – which ended three years ago when the company returned to being an independent, stand-alone business.
At that time the current managing directors, Stefan Gritsch and Wolfgang Rohner, who both hold shares in Schelling, took control of the business. They were joined by two other investors. The company has a turnover in the order of ❅1.6bn.
But 2003 marked more than just a change of ownership for the company. It also marked the launch of the ‘Evolution’ concept, which Schelling claims is a milestone in sawing technology.
“We see our strength as being in solving the highest challenges in the cut-to-size markets,” said Jürgen Thurnher, head of marketing.
The company has two production sites in Austria – the headquarters and main factory at Schwarzach, close to the large and beautiful Bodensee lake; and a smaller manufacturing unit in Altach. Together, these two facilities employ a total of 235 staff.
It also still has Schelling North America, as well as Schelling Polska in Poland  (established in 1998), and another sales and service centre in the UK (1989), mainly serving the furniture industry there.
In 2004, the company re-established a sales and service presence within Asia with Schelling Asia Pte Ltd, in Singapore.
Besides those subsidiaries, Schelling has also established a worldwide network of 45 dealers and service departments.
Schelling Anlagenbau supplies four main market areas: panel manufacturers, furniture makers, non-ferrous metal processors (such as the aircraft industry) and manufacturers of plastics and circuit boards.
Traditionally, panel makers account for anywhere up to 50% of the business, averaging around 20 to 30% depending on the market.
“We have a firm strategy for the business,” explained Mr Thurnher. “Our main goal is to ‘be the first choice for the ambitious customer’ and we intend to make it possible for the customer to produce high quality products economically by getting close to him and engaging with him.”
The company offers plants which include sorting, stacking and packaging.
“Schelling has the biggest market share, particularly in Europe where it is around 50% and it also has a similar share in the US,” said Stefan Hinterholzer, sales manager for the large cut-to-size plants.
“Logistics are very important and so the software is very important,” he added. “We have our own optimisation software specific to our own systems and all our design activities are carried out inhouse – this is what we call ‘Schelling Plus’.
“It can be represented by a circle: logistics solutions are calculated and simulated; mechanical and electrical engineering are then carried out; then manufacturing and installation; control software; optimization software; start-up service and finally aftersales service, completing the circle.
A typical flow chart of data and material would involve optimisation software instructing the saw and importing the appropriate board from storage to be cut to the specified size. The cut pieces then go to stacking, with the automatic introduction of cover boards as required. Next comes strapping, then label printing if required.
Data is fed back from the strapping area to the customer ERP, and board storage and parts list information is exchanged with the optimisation system to guarantee a  customized solution to fulfil customer requirements, explains Mr Hinterholzer.
An example of such a system was that supplied to Weyerhaeuser, where it covered from stacking to cut-to-size to packaging and labelling with a board size of 7.5m by 3.0m and thicknesses of 1.5mm to 40mm.
Start-up of every Schelling installation is carried out by its own staff, as is after-sales service. There is also a 24-hour hotline phone and an online maintenance remote updating service.
“We have been offering a remote diagnostics service for six or seven years now, with an ever-increasing number of sensors to monitor the machines and optimise the logistics in those machines,” said Mr Hinterholzer.
The Schelling Evolution sawing concept, launched in 2003, is said to produce up to 50% higher speed than a conventional system and to have a maximum achieved output of over 100m3 per hour of customized finished components with an optimized book height of up to 200mm.
It also incorporates the Schelling thin board feeding concept, which employs a nip roller principle with automatic feeding for boards down to 0.8mm thickness.
“Our policy is to optimise the 200mm book height as far as possible, rather than going to a 300 or 400mm book,” explained Mr Hinterholzer. “The question is: increase the speed or increase the book height? A larger book needs big batch runs and thus leads to reduced flexibility. Our long-term experience has shown us that it is better to have a lower book height and more flexibility in the system.”
The Schelling system uses only one saw, and not a cutting and a scribing saw common in other systems. The reason, according to Mr Hinterholzer, is that two blades create a longer pass for the panel before it clears both blades, and on the Schelling system there is only one blade to change for sharpening (compensating, he claims, for shorter blade life of a single blade), and there is less heat generated with one blade than two because with two blades, the gullet between the teeth is not exposed.
Another major feature of the Innovation saw carriage is that the saw motor is stationary whereas on most competitors’ machines, the motor has to be lifted up and down. “We only lift the pulley and saw blade, with a belt system,” explained Mr Thurnher.
The blade is clamped in its operating position and vibration is taken away through the heavy steel frame to the floor – claimed as another Schelling innovation. So is the use of a hardened steel blade to orientate the chips coming from the saw and remove them as quickly as possible, thus reducing saw blade wear.
“The heart of every Schelling cut-to-size plant is the saw with its heavy steel table,” explained Mr Thurnher. “Schelling saws just don’t wear out and today we have plants still in three-shift operation which were installed more than 15 years ago.”
Schelling’s saw tables are made with a sacrificial brass strip bolted on to the sawing edge of each half. On initial assembly, the two halves of the table are butted together and the saw is then run through, thus cutting its own, minimum width, gap in the brass. Tables are ultimately hard-chromed.
As an option, tables are available with the hardest surface treatment in the market, says the company.
With the Schelling Plus Strategy and the policy of manufacturing the main components in-house, the company says it offers the highest quality to its customers.
Design is carried out by CAD, which can also simulate forces in the system, and all software is designed in a dedicated department. The company has also carried out research into vibration, in partnership with a local technical college. “This is the kind of detail we go into,” said Mr Thurnher.
The apprentice department employs around 30 trainees and is one of the most important areas of the factory, ensuring Schelling’s future skill requirements.
“Training and education are key factors in supporting our customers.We have 22- year-olds in charge of our installations for smaller machines because of the level of their training.”
In spite of ownership changes, Schelling has carried on making sawing systems and developing them and the present management claims it is determined to continue that development.

Good surface quality is essential for those panel makers whose customer base is strongly focused on the furniture and decorative surface markets.
The sanding process is vital in achieving that finish, both in terms of the sanding machine itself and the abrasives used in it. But there is more to those abrasives than just grit stuck to a backing material.
Frauenfeld in Switzerland has been the home of a company specialising in the production of coated abrasives for 130 years.
The origin of the sia Abrasives name dates back to 1914 and the family business Swiss Industrial Abrasives. It continued as a family concern until a management buyout in 1997 and in 1999 it went public on the Swiss and German stock markets.
Today sia claims to be number three in the world in coated abrasives, with a 9% market share – and number one in Europe – with turnover almost doubling in the last 10 years, to reach CHF252.1m (€164m) in 2004. It has group companies in North and South America, all over Europe, and in Australia and China.
The general wood products industry accounts for 32.6% of total turnover, with the panel manufacturing industry accounting for another 15% and around US$40m.
“We are looking to grow two to three times faster than the market as a whole and that is what we have been doing in the wood based panels sector for the last few years,” said Angelo DiNardo, marketing and sales manager for the panel sector.
There are two principal groupings of abrasives and these are coated and bonded, with sia Abrasives’ speciality – coated products – being more pliable, having low noise and vibration, little fine dust, conformability to the shape of the work piece and constant grain geometry.
Of particular interest to the panel makers are the segmented wide belts.
The manufacturing process for these belts has two main stages – production of the ‘jumbo rolls’ of abrasive material and then ‘conversion’ of it into endless belts.
The backing material can be paper, polyester, cloth, or a combination of paper and cloth.
Silicon carbide is the grit material normally used for sanding MDF and particleboard, while aluminium oxide would be the normal choice for plywood, with the choice being governed by the hardness and brittleness of the abrasive material.
Additionally, all products for the panel industry have an anti-static treatment.
In the production process, the backing is first printed with the sia Abrasives name and the  specification of the belt before the ‘make coat’ is applied as the adhesive base.
This backing is then electrostatically coated with the grit, which is first applied to a conveyor belt and then lifted on to the abrasive belt backing by means of a positive electrode above it. The belt is then hung in loops in an oven, which holds around 1.5km of belt.
The size coat is then applied over the abrasive. “We apply much more size coat than make coat and because it is water based, we have to dry it below the boiling point of water in a 230m long dryer – this one holds two to four kilometres of belt,” explains Donat Frei, head of production and a member of the group management.
After three and a half hours the resin is pre-cured and the jumbo roll goes into another oven to complete the curing.
The next process is after-treatment and then ‘breaking’ over opposing-angled rollers to flex the belt before it is re-hydrated with water.
The company has recently invested a total of CHF35m in extending and modernizing its jumbo roll manufacturing and conversion facilities with CHF2.5m going to the fully automated glue mixing systems.
“We have also re-engineered the whole production process, putting everything into a linear and modular system as part of our five-year investment programme,” said Mr Frei.
“We now produce for all markets in one grit size at one time by having all size formulations, types and colours prepared in one place and, together with other streamlining measures, we have reduced production time from nine weeks for batch production to three weeks for the whole assortment.”
Other investments included reorganizing the storage of backing and grit and a fully automated, robotic warehouse.
The next production stage is conversion. Here, a new facility for the panel industry, opened in October 2004, led to an increase of over 30% in capacity, with the potential to double the original output.
The belt is cut to length at an angle (to prevent chatter in the sander) and these lengths are actually the width of the wide belt which is to be produced.
These sections are then joined together, or lapped. In the lap preparation unit, diamond wheels remove the grit from the surface of the belt to expose the backing on the longitudinal edges and this is followed by automatic gluing of those edges in the same machine, with glue being applied to one edge and a splice tape to the other.
The edges are then lapped and a heated plate lowered on to the lap joint, which is roller-pressed.
When a sufficient number of segments have been joined in this way to form the desired length of belt, the ends are joined in a similar process to form a loop.
The final stage is visual inspection and the belt is then rolled with brown paper in between the layers and packed in a cardboard box. Some belts are packed with foil to protect against climatic influences.
One of sia Abrasive’s latest products, launched at Ligna in 2005, is a completely new approach to the sanding platen.
“The existing system, used for the last 30 or 40 years, involved sticking felt and an anti-slip surface to the platen and then covering it with graphite so that it slides on the back of the belt,” explained Mr Frei. The graphite material was then clamped along both edges of the platen with many screws along each side.
“With that system and a change of platen once or twice a day on a six- or eighthead sander a lot of production time is lost, and if you tighten the screws unevenly you get bubbles in the graphite layer and consequent marks on the panel surface – or in the worst case, the graphite material can tear,” said Mr Frei.
The new system, the sia-slide-pad, is based on a new metal platen beam with a swallow-tail cross-sectional profile. An MDF-based pad with the same surface components as a conventional platen is simply slid into the platen from one end and the end closed with a twist lock.
“Now, changing the pad takes 30 to 60 seconds instead of five to 10 minutes and it is not necessary to lift the heavy platen out of the sander – it can all be done in situ,” said the production manager.
The newest product specifically aimed at the woodworking industry, and also launched at Ligna, is a wide belt called TopTec. This is said to offer greatly improved anti-static properties, thus avoiding dust problems on the work piece. The belt is paper-backed, with a special treatment to help it stay flat in humid conditions, while a special coating has given better performance, says sia Abrasives.
Readers may have realised by now that the whole sanding issue is a lot more complex than it looks, which is why sia Abrasives runs training seminars for its customers.
Considerable capital investment at Frauenfeld, and ongoing investment of 3% of turnover in its R&D department, which employs 30 scientists and engineers, suggests ‘true grit’ in this Swiss abrasives manufacturer’s approach to the market.

Usually, panel manufacturers rely on the optimisation systems which come with a sawing system.
“However, saw manufacturers address a wide clientele, from saws for joinery companies to cutting systems for the plastics and gypsum industry and that is why the accompanying optimisation systems are often not aligned with the specific needs of wood based panel manufacturers,” claims Roland Schramme, managing partner of Altanis, whose business is in optimization systems.
“What causes problems is the maximization of throughput and capacity for 24/7 operations; the online integration of cutting systems of other manufacturers; the online integration with ERP/PPS systems and a simple implementation of the extensive packaging instructions of customers.”
Furthermore, Mr Schramme asserts that the trend towards a declining size of orders reduces throughput and increases cutting: “Very often, order-specific production costs cannot be calculated and the optimization system delivers complex cutting plans which are not cost-optimised and take a very long time to cut,” he says.
This is the focus of Altanis’ solution ‘pCUT’ for wood based panel manufacturers – streamlining the production process while at the same time reducing cost.
“The success of pCUT has already been proved by a number of well-known panel manufacturers. For instance Pfleiderer Engineered Wood of Neumarkt, Germany has deployed pCUT successfully in three plants,” says Mr Schramme in a claim backed up by his customer: “The implementation of Altanis pCUT was amortised after six months,” says Martin Rong, executive director of Pfleiderer Engineered Wood. “And further on, the quality of the value  chain has been improved significantly.”
In order to achieve profitable prices, it is of course necessary to know the cost of the product. The key component of that is the production cost, which is itself composed of machine cost, raw material (input and clipping) cost and packaging cost. Very often, claims Mr Schramme, these costs are not known in detail but are calculated using empirically acquired average values, which are neither customer- , nor order-specific. The knowledge of single aspects like average clipping, mean stacking height or number of cut cycles is not sufficient for an accurate and order-specific cost calculation in the panel manufacturing process, he says, and, therefore, the customer- and order-specific costs of panel manufacturing cannot be calculated before production starts.
“Because of the inadequate knowledge of the production cost, customer prices cannot be calculated according to the true costs of production. Therefore, unprofitable orders could be accepted while profitable orders might be rejected,” says Mr Schramme.
With the detailed calculation of the order-specific production costs, Altanis claims the following targets can be reached:

Founded by Hans-Peter Kleinschmidt in 1996, Electronic Wood Systems, or EWS, has developed a range of electronic systems to monitor quality and safety on panel production lines.
From small beginnings in Springe in northern Germany, the company moved to its current premises in Hameln, 50km from Hanover, and the home of the legendary Pied Piper of the children’s story, in 1995.
Originally the Hefehof yeast and schnapps factory, the old restored buildings were adapted under a government/local authority scheme to accommodate small ‘high-tech’ businesses in their start-up phase.
The original intention was that companies would stay for a maximum of five years and then move on.
However, EWS was given special dispensation to stay at Hefehof and has been there for nine years, but now Mr Kleinschmidt has plans to relocate his business.
“We have a reservation on a 4,500m2 property, still in Hameln, and plan to build our new offices and production centre there in 2006,” he told WBPI. “We need more space and it will be a better location for our staff.”
The business has developed since those early start-up days, expanding its product range and its global market penetration and 2005 showed an 80% increase in turnover on the previous year.
Such increases obviously require more hands to run the business and there have been two significant appointments to the board of directors of EWS in the last two years.
First came Matthias Fuchs. Having run the research and development (R&D) division at competitor GreCon (where Mr Kleinschmidt also started in the business), he joined EWS as technical director and executive vice-president in May 2004, also becoming a shareholder in the business.
Then, in April 2005, Hans-Peter Kleinschmidt’s son Hauke joined EWS as sales director. Hauke, a precision engineering graduate was, prior to his appointment, responsible for R&D of mechanical components, including optics and electronics, for Mahr of Germany.
Export has always been the lifeblood of this business, averaging around 90% of sales, but Mr Kleinschmidt has seen what he describes as “a breakthrough” in the German market recently.
One such domestic customer was Kunz (now part of Pfleiderer), which purchased a blow detection system after a three month trial installation in its Gschwend factory. EWS had to prove the system could measure 55mm particleboard immediately after the press exit.
As a result, further export orders arrived – Kunz subsidiary Uniboard in Canada bought a blow detection system for its La Baie MDF line.
Back in Germany, EWS closed an order through Siempelkamp in September 2005 to supply a laser thickness gauge for the Gutex thick insulation board line which Siempelkamp is supplying in southern Germany.
The Conti-Scale, launched at Ligna 2005, is a completely new area for EWS. It measures panel weights on the line and, when combined with thickness gauges, can also deliver density data to the line operators, employing a low-radiation isotopic source.
“It measures with very, very low radiation sources – equivalent to the levels in an aeroplane at 30,000ft, or a smoke detector,” said Mr Kleinschmidt.
“If you want to increase production speed on a continuous line you extend the press length, but then you don’t have room for a traditional board scale and need to move the star cooler along, but that is not necessary with the Conti-Scale as it only takes up 300mm of space. Also, very thin board moves too fast for a conventional scale but ours has unlimited line speed. Conti-Scale also shows weight variations across the board, not just the total board weight.”
Under the motto ‘Scanning for quality’, EWS produces a range of equipment for on-the-line as well as laboratory applications.
Thick-Scan has measuring heads mounted in pairs on one to eight tracks on the production line behind the press and/or sander to monitor the thickness of finished panels of OSB, particleboard, MDF, plywood, or LVL.
Ultra-Scan delamination detectors can also be installed behind the press or sander and employ ultra-sonic transmitters and receivers across the width of the line to produce a sonic picture in up to 256 colours. This is a patented resonance system.
“This resonance leads to a one hundred-fold increase in sound penetration energy to avoid interference or ‘noise’ from surrounding equipment,” explained Mr Kleinschmidt. In addition to delamination detection, the sound picture produced can also indicate areas of elevated moisture in the panel, or thickness variations, according to the sensitivity level set by the operator.
The company says that very thick panels can be penetrated by this system, which is why Pacific Wood Technology of Washington, US, chose it for both its LVL lines.
Temlam LVL in Canada has also ordered Ultra-Scan blow detection, and thickness gauges, for its new Raute line.
Mass-Scan continuously measures mat or panel weight-per-unit-area cross-wise or linearly on the production line. Low dose x-ray sensors are positioned between the forming line and the press, or over the finished panel, and a 3-D image is produced on a computer screen.
Measuring the moisture content of particles after the dryer is a difficult area, but EWS offers the MC-Scan, which employs an electrical resistance method to continuously monitor the material in the chutes. It takes a sample using a screw system, returning it to the chute after measuring.
The MT-Scan employs near infra-red (NIR) technology to measure moisture in fibres, chips or mat during production.
Fires have caused catastrophic damage and lost production to many panel plants around the world and in order to prevent this, EWS offers Spark-Scan, using spark detectors in combination with water spraying nozzles to extinguish sparks before they become fires.
Completing the product line-up is the laboratory system Dense-Lab X. This measures the density profile of panel samples throughout their thickness. Rauch and Glunz (Germany), Nelson Pine (New Zealand), PTP (China), and Sumitomo and Tostem (Japan) have all bought this system.
Electronic Wood Systems also cooperates with Argos Control AS of Kongsberg, Norway, a manufacturer of automatic grading systems for panel surfaces.
“We represent Argos in Austria, Germany and Switzerland and they have established an office in the same building here in Hameln,” explained Hans-Peter Kleinschmidt. “We cooperate in the market, sharing contacts and representing each other.”
Argos, founded in 1992, has over 10 years’ experience in raw board surface grading systems and Glunz of Eiweiler, Germany, has recently ordered an Argos grader after good experience with an installation which has been in operation in its Kaisersesch plant for three years. More than 60 systems are in operation so far.
The market for EWS is truly global and Mr Kleinschmidt said that eastern Europe is developing well for the company.
“In early September we sold blow detection and thickness gauges to Kronopol in Zary, Poland and two thickness gauges and a blow detection system to Egger’s project in Shuya, Russia.”
Daiken already has EWS measuring systems installed in its MDF factory in Bintulu, Sarawak and has now purchased a weight per unit area gauge ‘Mass-Scan’ for its Miri MDF plant.
In Nigeria, the company has supplied the full range of its equipment to Omo Wood’s particleboard lines.
In the North American market, EWS is represented by EWS Int in Beaverton, Oregon, run by Steven L Mays.
It is also represented in China, Korea and Japan and EWS’ own sales staff travel the globe in sales and service roles.
In upgrading secondhand production lines, EWS has supplied Merbok MDF Lanka (Sri Lanka), Omo Wood (Nigeria) and Mortka MDF (Russia).
The company recently gained ISO 9002 certification.
In what for many companies have been difficult market conditions in recent years, EWS has expanded its business and its staffing levels and seems confident about its future.

Diversification is a much-used word, with many experts advising companies to encompass a range of different business activities in order to spread their exposure to market fluctuations. Pfleiderer, a well-known name in panel making for over 40 years had, until quite recently, followed that mantra very thoroughly.
Headquartered in Neumarkt in Bavaria since 1962, Pfleiderer has had a wide range of manufacturing businesses since it started in sawmilling as a family concern in Heilbronn in 1894. These have included specialist spun concrete and steel poles and masts (such as mobile telephone masts), insulation materials, rail track systems and wind energy, as well as wood based panels.
However, today the company is entirely focused on one sector – what it calls its  engineered wood products (EWP) business – and this thoroughgoing ‘re-invention’ of Pfleiderer has been brought about under the leadership of Hans H Overdiek, 53, a man with extensive experience in senior management positions in various industries, who joined the Pfleiderer board in January 2001.
“In 2002, when business was very poor, we had to make a decision,” says Mr Overdiek. “Our panels business was only in particleboard at the time and was heavily dependent on the German market, which was poor and unlikely to improve soon.
“It was clear that we were in too many businesses with no synergies, all of which needed cash and management attention if we were to be among the top players in each sector. In engineered wood products, though far from being one of the really big players, in the markets of mid-Europe, Poland and Russia, we were still among the top companies in particleboard-based products.”
Poland has been a particular success story for the company since Pfleiderer entered that country with the purchase of two particleboard plants, in Grajewo and Wieruszow, in 1999. A turnover of €120m and an EBT (earnings before tax) of €10-12m in 2001 has now been turned into €240m turnover, while profitability has more than doubled. The company also completed its buyout of Thermopal in that year.
“In analysing where the business was going we could see that, although Germany was still our most important wood panel market, it would not generate growth, especially for particleboard, and was in fact more likely to decline. Therefore we had to seek new products and regions for growth,” says Mr Overdiek.
This was when he decided to sell off all the other businesses and focus on particleboard and new wood panel-based products. That disinvestment process has just ended with the sale of the rail track systems.
“Having made that decision, we then set three top priorities,” explains the ceo.
“Firstly, the German market may be bad but it is still the most important in western Europe, so we had to get our business here into the best shape and regain profitability.
“We did this by taking out particleboard capacity and starting a new business model in Germany. That means we would no longer try to be ‘everybody’s darling’ but would concentrate on the people who would maintain the business and who we could do business with five years on.”
In 2002, Pfleiderer had more than 1,500 customers involved in the furniture sector and today it has around 300, explains Mr Overdiek.
“Clearly we look for volume business, but also specialities. We define the customer by the added value we can bring to him and he can bring to us. We did the same for the  urniture-related part of our business, which makes up 70% of our revenue, with 30% being in the specialist trade and distributors.
“We introduced a new business model here too: instead of going to each and every distributor, we concentrated on 200 leading ones as our regional distributors, who could then supply the smaller furniture makers.”
Mr Overdiek then sets out the second of his priorities.
“We had a strategic gap,” he explains. “We were nobody in MDF – we lacked the technology and production know-how, and the plant. Thus we took over the Nidda plant from the receivers of Hornitex in 2004, which solved those two problems. The receivers closed down the particleboard line at Nidda before we bought the site and then it was dismantled. We also closed our own particleboard line at Rheda in 2004. Between them, this removed almost a million m3 of capacity from the [Germanmade] market in 12 months, in a €17m write-off.”
Pfleiderer took on the 130,000m3 a year Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous MDF line at Nidda in third-quarter 2004.
“In 2001, Pfleiderer had a turnover of €1.4bn and we have since sold €650m of turnover,” says Mr Overdiek. This included pulling out of all non-EWP product areas. “The funds generated were used to pay down debt and to fund new investments, which brings me to my third priority – to grow by new investment and by region.”
This growth started with the new factory at Novgorod in Russia, where the foundation stone was laid in May 2004, full permits were obtained by the end of that year and construction was due to be completed at the end of 2005. The short-cycle press lines will commence production at the end of February 2006, with the particleboard press – the continuous one removed from Rheda and refurbished – starting production in April. Capacity is expected to be 500,000m3 a year “depending on how we tune it,” grins Mr Overdiek. A decor paper impregnation line is also planned there.
Pfleiderer was already experienced in the way of doing business in Russia, having had insulation material plants there since 1996.
“We have had a successful history in doing business in Russia and were able to prepare the market in the furniture sector with production from our Grajewo plant in surfaced board and melamine films,” continues Mr Overdiek.
“Then came the big move for Pfleiderer. The company was back in the black in 2004 after heavy losses in the previous two years – and this was achieved through the  perating business, not just by the disposal of assets.We were then able to convince the institutional investors to buy shares in Pfleiderer and it has been a good business for them. When I took over, the shares were priced at less than three euros and within two years they had risen to over fifteen.
“Our next move was to go from being a mediocre particleboard player in Germany to being one of the top five in panel making by acquiring Kunz and merging the two companies. Now we will become one of the top global players in the furniture production and interior design sectors.We now have not just a small MDF plant in Nidda but one of the best in Europe at Baruth [formerly Kunz] and we have access to two MDF plants in North America [Uniboard, part of the Kunz business] and, for the first time, access to the laminate flooring market with one of the few integrated laminate flooring manufacturers in North America, Uniboard, with a market share there of around 14%.”
The takeover of the Kunz group was delayed by the need to first remove some 360,000m3 of uneconomic particleboard production at Uniboard – line one at Sayabec and the whole site at New Liskeard – and was concluded on October 13, 2005.
The Kunz name will disappear as the German operations are re-branded Pfleiderer, while the Uniboard name will continue, says Mr Overdiek.
“We see very significant potential to increase the profitability of Uniboard by applying more European know-how, bringing in more technical competence and by concentrating the business on higher-margin value-added products.
“The combined business will be good for €1.4bn turnover and an EBITDA of €200m or better for 2006 and that doesn’t take into account any new investments.”
One such new investment that is not included, and which is valued at €83m, was confirmed in its final form on November 2, 2005. That is a new, greenfield, thin MDF line to be built at Grajewo, Poland, with an annual capacity of 250,000m3. Start-up is scheduled for quarter two, 2007. Also not included is the Novgorod line.
“We have a fine and solid financial base and will be able to grow the company  substantially from where we are now, in new products and new regions with a combination of local organic growth and new investments,” says Mr Overdiek, backing up his reasons for reversing the diversification of Pfleiderer under his stewardship:
“We are far less vulnerable than we were two or three years ago, by concentrating our management focus and our funds in one business area – wood based panels. But, we have significantly taken out risk and volatility by taking our business away from just Germany and expanding regionally in areas which show organic growth, such as eastern Europe – and which show better profitability, even for a more ‘mature’ product like particleboard. We have also shifted our risk portfolio from purely particleboard-related products to MDF and laminate flooring.
“The North American laminate flooring market grew by 25% last year and eastern Europe will show double digit growth and we have three large plants with most of the infrastructure already in place.”
Pfleiderer was number five in composite panel production volume in Europe even before it bought Kunz. After that acquisition, Mr Overdiek expects a market share in Germany of around 30% for particleboard and 14% for MDF. And he believes that the ‘big five’ players will get bigger, with more takeovers and mergers and so the market will become less fragmented.
In 2002, Pfleiderer was in fact very close to buying all the Hornitex mills but he says there were too many staff employed there.
“We would have wanted a maximum of 400 in Horn, but there are nearly 1,000 and we would have shut the loss-making businesses. We wanted to buy Beeskow [MDF plant] as well as Nidda but the receiver would not sell it separately. I would still be interested in that mill on its own, at the right price.”
But the Overdiek philosophy is not just about size: “I am not looking just at turnover, but at profitability because that will help me to grow the company and give returns to my shareholders and that is what we are going to do,” he says.
Pfleiderer also had a joint venture, started in January 2000 with Binder Holz: MDF Hallein in Austria, which started production that year. However, Pfleiderer pulled out of that business in September 2001, to the surprise of many observers.
“Hallein was not able to produce the product we needed for our German furniture manufacturing market – it was designed for different products,” explains Mr Overdiek. “There were also business cultural differences and we thought it best to part and I believe it was the right decision; we are in 100% charge of all our businesses now.”
Pfleiderer sells its products under three brand names: Pfleiderer, Wodego and Thermopal.
Wodego was launched in August 2003 with a programme for panels including Duropal for HPL and worktops. “Wodego is still for volume business, but to specialized distributors,” explains Mr Overdiek.
Pfleiderer Holzwerkstoffe Vertriebs GmbH handles sales to key accounts in the furniture sector, while Thermopal is similar to Wodego but doesn’t include any raw board products and has a specialized product range.
So what of the future for Pfleiderer?
“When I say we will continue to grow, I am not talking just ‘natural growth’. We are prepared to continue with acquisitions to grow both product-wise and regionally. We plan upgrading of existing facilities and new acquisitions and we are also willing to make greenfield investments,” concludes Mr Overdiek.
So this company certainly seems to be one to watch in this evolving industry.

Readers of WBPI will be very familiar with press lines, refiners, chippers, sanders and saws and the whole panoply of machinery needed to make their panels.
However, the wood does not arrive at the front end of those lines by magic. It requires transporting from ship, to rail or road truck, to woodyard, and from woodyard to the beginning of the production process, which is where Sennebogen comes in.
Founded in 1952 by the present owner Erich Sennebogen, now in his 70s, who still lives in an apartment atop the office building at Straubing, the company began by producing manure loaders, reflecting Mr Sennebogen’s farming background.
Those first machines, while they may be a far cry from a panel mill, were specifically designed for purpose and it seems that has always been the philosophy behind the  company’s products.
Mr Sennebogen’s two sons, Erich junior and Walter, run the sales and marketing, and accounts for the business, respectively.
The product range is divided into three principal ‘colour-coded’ lines: cranes, both heavy-duty and telescopic (yellow line); materials handling machines (green line); and mobile harbour/port cranes (blue line).
Sennebogen also produces special base carriers as modular components. These can carry and power a variety of attachments and the customer can specify the engine, connecting points, multiple hydraulic systems, wheeled or tracked undercarriages, cabs and other customised solutions.
In the early days you would find Sennebogen machines on construction sites, but not today – at least not a recent machine – as the company now prefers to specialise in its niche markets where there is somewhat less global competition.
The company has two factories in Germany – the main one in Straubing and another in Wackersdorf, 80km away. It also has a factory in Hungary where the steel components for machine undercarriages are produced for the German factories.
Until now, the Wackersdorf factory has produced the smaller Caterpillar machines but this arrangement has come to an end and Sennebogen will now produce its own machines there; in fact it badly needed the production space for its own products.
In line with its modular production philosophy, the company principally offers two engines, from Caterpillar and Deutz, with John Deere power units for the US market.
For the panel industry, it is the ‘green line’ machines which are of particular interest and general materials handling equipment is the biggest-selling line for Sennebogen.
Each vehicle in the factory is custommade to order, starting with the undercarriage – the components for which are prefabricated in Hungary and modified to customer specification at Straubing.
First the hand made tracks, or the rubber- tyred wheels, are fitted to make a rolling base and then the required upper parts are fitted: the body, the appropriate engine, which ranges from a 70kW to a 700kW unit, and the hydraulics. Tracked bases can be made with adjustable width for transportation or storage or can be operated at the narrower width in confined spaces.
Then the cab and the jib are fitted to the body and finally the specific lifting gear, such as a log grab, is added.
The factory took delivery of a new stateof-the-art CNC drilling centre this year to add to the existing one and these two machines accurately drill the heavy undercarriages for attaching the components. Hydraulic cylinder pistons are also machined on site, on a computer-controlled lathe.
“Nearly all our staff, including at director level, are trained in our own training centre here and we try to retain our trained staff within the company,” said Mr Kirst,  international marketing manager.
“This is a family-owned business and all the employees are part of the family – there are a thousand people in the whole group, with 350 here in Straubing.”
All machines are thoroughly tested in the yard before delivery to the customer.
When repairs are required, customers are guaranteed a 24-hour delivery worldwide, unless the logistics are impossible of course; some of those parts are big and heavy.
One of Sennebogen’s innovative ideas was to mount its cabs in such a way that they can be hydraulically raised to enable the driver to see over the side of a truck he is loading or unloading, for example. Another was to put a heavy chain in the jaws of the log grab, to lie on a partial load of logs and stop them from sliding out.
Another instance of such lateral thinking was exhibited for the first time at Ligna 2005, and this was the idea of moving the boom mounting to the back of the vehicle on the 7-Series, thus improving all-round vision for the driver.
Alfred Endl, president of sales and operations, emphasised the importance of the wood products industry to Sennebogen.
“Sawmills and the wood based industry in general are a major part of our business because of our range of ‘pick and carry’ machines.We go for special solutions, niches and smaller quantity production, while our competitors are more in mass production. We have had a strong five years because of this. The logging, port, recycling/ scrap industries are all strong for us.”
Mr Endl outlined how the company got to where it is today: after that first manure loader in 1953, Sennebogen produced a mechanised grabber the following year and in 1957 turned to the construction industry with a mechanical rope excavator.
“By 1960, we had produced our 1,000^th crawler/mobile crane, while in 1964, we  produced the first hydraulically operated excavator – an example of the innovation on which this company is founded,” said Mr Endl.
In 1969, Sennebogen moved into truck cranes with lattice booms and in the same year, produced the world’s first fully hydraulic rope excavator.
Three years later came plastic and GRP bodywork – another first – followed by the industrial carry deck crane in 1977 which led to diversification into other industries.
For many years, Sennebogen made machines for other companies and hence its name did not appear on some of its most significant advances; examples are Zeppelin, Hanomag and Caterpillar-labelled vehicles.
“The real development of our identity took place in the 1990s,” said Mr Endl.
The Green Line of materials handling machines was developed by Erich Sennebogen junior in 1996.
Sennebogen has 50 distributors in Europe, Asia and Australia and 21 in North America, including 120 depots.
The 7-Series log picker/grabber has been a strong sales line and there are units working 23 hours a day all year round at some customers, according to Mr Endl. “Its 360o working radius and all-wheel steering mean it takes up very little manoeuvring space and therefore frees up storage area,” he said.
Sennebogen avoids complicated electronics in its vehicles, preferring less sensitive systems. “We can avoid electronics and rely on electrical and hydraulic systems because we are dedicated to materials handling, unlike our competitors. Customers can be quickly trained in any necessary service and maintenance routines,” said Mr Endl.

Following the publication of the European standard EN 314: Glue bond quality test and evaluation in 1993, there was evidence of huge variations between laboratories and operators in the visual assessment part of the glue bond test for plywood.
A growing concern about this lack of consistency in testing was the driver behind the EC-funded project, ‘Calibration and testing for the evaluation of plywood glue bond performance in accordance with EN 314-1 and EN 314-2’.
The project, funded by the European Community under the Competitive and Sustainable Growth programme, set out to develop a PC-based training and calibration system for evaluating plywood glue bond performance according to EN 314. The result is two software programs that will work either independently or together.
PlyWoodFail is an automated image analysis system for the evaluation of wood fibre failure (WFF), while PlyBond is a database program to record data and WFF images for internal/external factory production control compliance and for internal/external evaluator training.
Evaluation of plywood glue bond performance is compulsory for CE compliance and marking according to the EU Construction Products Directive (CPD) harmonised standard EN13986: 2002 Wood-based panels for use in construction. Characteristics, evaluation of conformity and marking.
This PC-based system is suitable for use by plywood factories, accredited laboratories and notified bodies involved in the evaluation and certification of glue bond performance, as the project partners intended.
It was also their aim to validate the test and requirement methods set down in EN 314-1 and EN 314-2, along with the procedures for attestation of conformity under the CPD.
The work was broken down into three sub-projects and six work packages, which in broad outline entailed: