For a company vastly experienced in lumber processing and furniture manufacture, Green River Panels (Thailand) Co Ltd was taking a big new step in setting up a state-of-the-art particleboard line from scratch.

Green River Wood and Lumber Group is the parent company and has furniture making operations in China, Vietnam and Malaysia (see p38 in this issue) and sawmills in Thailand and Malaysia.
Sawmills are of course excellent providers of raw material for particleboard mills and that is why Green River decided to build its first panel plant adjacent to its sawmill at Bangklum near Hat Yai in southern Thailand.

One year ago, WBPI visited Siam Fibreboard’s Hat Yai site and reported on the imminent start-up of its new 18MW electrical energy generation plant, which now has the
trading name GRE Energy Company Ltd (Thailand).

The Metro-Ply group of companies is one of the oldest players in the field of panel production in Thailand.

It started out as a teak sawmill, going into plywood production in 1973, followed by entry into veneer production, wet process hardboard, doors and finger-jointed hardwood.

Indeed, the company is still active in all those areas but it was in 1995 – a time of considerable activity in SE Asia for composite panel production lines – that the company entered the MDF business.

Green River Panels (Thailand) Co Ltd, part of the Green River Wood and Lumber Group, is a new venture for its long-established parent company, which has always specialised in furniture production for the mid- to high-end market.   The group has furniture production facilities in Malaysia, Vietnam and China and also has some sawmilling operations in Malaysia and Thailand.   One of these sawmills, built on a Greenfield site in 2001, is located in Bangklum, near Hat Yai in the south of Thailand, and is one of five mills owned by the company within a 60km radius of Bangklum.   I know what you are thinking: Five sawmills, lots of residues, ideal for a particleboard line. That is exactly what Green River thought, too, placing a contract in May 2006 with Dieffenbacher for all equipment from the forming line to the star cooler, including a CPS continuous press.   As we learnt from last year's article (WBPI issue 1, 2007, p32), groundworks began in October 2006.   I returned to Green River in early December 2007 to find the last frantic preparations - necessary in every mill as it nears completion - for start-up at the end of that month. I subsequently heard that the first board was produced on December 19 and that the company planned commercial production before the end of February 2008.

We have charted the story of a massive panel production complex in Hat Yai, southern Thailand, for about the last 11 years - most of which have been turbulent. However, as we reported in WBPI issues 1, 2005 and 1, 2007, recent years have seen a revival of a large part of the site under two new owners. Just to recap briefly, that original complex was conceived by STA in the mid-1990s but soon ran into severe financial difficulties. In February 2004, MP Particleboard of Thailand and Evergreen Group of Malaysia jointly purchased a large part of the assets from the receivers of STA Group.

The long history of the former STA wood processing complex in Hat Yai has been well-documented in this magazine over the past 10 years or more.   Last year we introduced readers to the new building erected for Panel Plus' planned new decor paper impregnation line (WBPI issue 1, 2007, p24) and in late 2007, we returned to see the building finished and the new sate-of-the-art Vits line in full production.   The impressive glass-fronted building required over 600 piles to be sunk to support its 96x42m steel-framed structure, which has space - and the foundations - for a second impregnation line at a later date, should the company wish to make that investment.

Vanachai's 350-acre industrial site outside the southern city of Suratthani saw its first panel production line in 1997. This took the form of a Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous press line with a capacity of around 300,000m³/year of particleboard. It was of course clear that a site on such a grand scale was not going to stop at one particleboard factory and in 2004 a second ContiRoll press line - and the third continuous line for the group, which also has production sites in Chonburi and Chachoengsao - started production with a particleboard capacity of 450,000m³/year (WBPI issue 1, 2005, p29).

Not only has SPB Panel Industries Co Ltd started up its first particleboard line, in Suratthani in southern Thailand, but this is also the company's first venture into the panel business.   The parent company, SPO Agro-Industries Co Ltd, is focused entirely on coconut and palm oil extraction and first decided to go into particleboard production as a diversification in 2001 (WBPI issue 1, 2006, p33).   Thus Seang-Siri Particleboard was formed, Ligna 2003 was visited, and a contract was signed with Dieffenbacher for the complete line in July 2004.

When Green River Panels (Thailand) Co Ltd produces its first particleboard panel in Songkhla province in the third quarter of this year, it will also be producing the first panel product the Green River Wood and Lumber group has ever made. Established over 18 years ago, this Taiwanese company is headquartered in Port Klang in Malaysia. It specialises in the production of furniture in the mid-to higher-price range, with its main manufacturing bases in Malaysia, Vietnam and China.

We are becoming regular visitors to the Metro-Ply group of companies as it continues to add new panel manufacturing capacity to its range. In 2005 we reported on the construction of the company's first particleboard line, at Sai Noi, near Bangkok (WBPI issue 1 2005, p34). This line was equipped with a Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous press which was 23.8m long - at the time. Metro had always intended to extend the length of that press and the foundations were laid with that in mind, while ancillary equipment was designed with the capacity to cater for that extension and its increased capacity.

The turbulent history of the former STA wood processing complex on its one square kilometre site in Hat Yai has been well-documented in WBPI over the last 10 years. Our most recent reports (issue 1, 2005, p42), described how MP Particleboard of Thailand and Evergreen Fibreboard of Malaysia formed a joint venture to save a major part of that original multi-wood-product project by taking on the two particleboard and two MDF production lines and beginning to restore them.

When Ms Amporn Kanjanakumnerd, managing director of MP Particleboard, set about taking over the former STA panel production lines in 2002, she began a journey that was long and arduous, but which resulted in the resurrection of two particleboard lines. At first, they went under the name of Hat Yai Panel, but this was later changed to Panel Plus Co Ltd (WBPI issue 1, 2005, p38).

This was WBPI’s third visit to a company which has been involved in the Thai panel manufacturing industry since 1954. Our first visit was in late 1996.

After a long period of uncertainty, the former STA factory should have two MDF and two particleboard lines up and running very soon.
As a result of a joint approach between M P Particleboard of Thailand and Evergreen Fibreboard of Malaysia, in which MP was the lead company, a buyout of these four lines from the receivers of STA Group was completed in February 2004.
Evergreen Fibreboard has two MDF (a calender press and a Dieffenbacher continuous press) lines and a furniture factory in Johor state and a particleboard line in Segamat, as  well as two veneering works in Pasir Gudang, also in Johor.
This company, under the leadership of the Kuo family, has grown dramatically from a small veneering operation to its present size in Malaysia, with much of that growth having taken place in the last five or six years.

In the mid-1990s, the South East Asian panel manufacturing industry was growing at an unprecedented rate.

Panel making is something of a family tradition at Green Panel – the two brothers who own the company started their first plywood factory in 1987.