This year marks 25 years since Hans-Joachim (Hajo) Binder sold his first complete secondhand particleboard line to a company called National Particleboard in Pakistan.That line, like Mr Binder’s company Modul Systeme, is still very much in operation.
Modul also owns two-thirds of a company called Springer M-R-S. Located in Springe, alongside Modul’s warehouse full of second-hand and refurbished machinery, SMRS designs and manufactures brand new gluing systems and board transfer stations for calender lines as well as custom-designed forming stations. It also carries out refurbishment and reconditioning of a wide range of machines for itself and for Modul Systeme.
In November 2008, SMRS resumed the activities of a company once commonly seen in panel mills – DeMets NV – which manufactured presses, pre-presses and cement bonded particleboard cold presses. SMRS acquired the rights to the DeMets name and alldrawings and specifications. New DeMets presses are now available from SMRS and it also offers service and spare parts for all existing DeMets equipment.
“Our clients are often used to, and more comfortable with, proven technologies,” said Mr Binder, ceo of Modul Systeme. “They don’t like ‘black boxes’ where they are not in control of the process and can’t see what is going on. So, we developed a high-tech gluing system with freely programmable controls. It is a modular system with the modules built into frames which can simply be lifted into place, connected together and they are working within two days.”
Sales manager Margret Michl described the concept in contemporary terms as “plug and play”.
“If you are buying a Siempelkamp or Dieffenbacher complete big continuous production line and their engineers come and install everything for you and get it working, that’s OK,” continued Mr Binder. “But with a more-basic line upgrade or modification, our approach is preferred and we can offer upgrades to all particleboard and MDF lines, as well as offering complete lines.” Modul also has a history in plywood lines.
The majority of Modul’s business is in developing countries where less technological
‘sophistication’ is often preferred and where the skill-set in the factory may be lower than in western European countries, for example.
“We allow our clients to choose what they want, based on their own experience, rather than presenting them with just one option,” said the chief executive.
The glue preparation/mixing systems offered by Modul are basically common to both MDF and particleboard mills although the application of the glues is obviously different.
For the particleboard industry, the company has developed flake dosing bins with  integrated belt scales and it also supplies the blenders, with exchangeable liners (‘wear troughs’) if required.
Some glue system projects are supplied via OEM’s such as Dieffenbacher. As an example, the Unopan MDF line supplied by Dieffenbacher was equipped with glue dosing for its 1,400m3/day capacity from Modul Systeme, as a sub-contractor.
The latest direct supply of a glue dosing system for MDF went to Uniboard USA LLC for another 1400m3/day line.
“In our business we have to follow the client’s wishes – whatever he wants we will find.  We offer advice but if the customer is set on one particular thing, that is fine,” said Ms Michl.
Recent projects for Modul Systeme include the first-ever particleboard plant for Ethiopia.  This was a second-hand Bison/Dieffenbacher line from Molar Wood in Thailand, plus a  short-cycle press from Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Co Ltd (SWPM).
The Dieffenbacher press was a singleopening unit of 2440x14640mm with a capacity of 260m3/day; Maichew Particleboard Project produced its first board in March 2009.
In 2001, Modul supplied a Siempelkamp ContiRoll press, relocated from the US, to Kwangwon Lumber in South Korea to make MDF. In 2008, it supplied a second line, also from the US (Georgia Pacific) and this was another ContiRoll, with a capacity of 290m3 /day. First board was produced in August 2009.
Urupanel SA of Uruguay built that country’s first MDF line when Modul supplied another ContiRoll line, this time relocated from Daesung’s MDF factory in South Korea and with a capacity of 230m3/day. It produced its first board in April 2009.
A single-opening particleboard line was also supplied to Tableros Peruanos SA, relocated from Utisa in Spain. This 220m3/day Dieffenbacher press line produced its first board in October 2009. The line has ClassiFormer forming (originally from Metso).
In contrast to many companies in the panel industry, Modul has had quite a reasonable 2009 in terms of orders.
Repinho of Brazil purchased a shortcycle line, which is already in operation. It also ordered a particleboard line and dismantling started in August in the former factory of Merbok in Kedah, Malaysia. It is scheduled to restart in its new location during 2010.
A secondhand 4ft-wide Mende-type calender line from Venezuela, which started life producing particleboard, is being combined with a refiner from Pfleiderer’s plant in Nidda, Germany and will take shape, combined with other machinery, to make up a complete line for a Modul customer in the Far East, where it will then produce MDF.
The latest project for Modul at the time of my visit to its Laufen offices in early October was to dismantle Glunz’s first MDF line, Topan 1, in Germany, and transport it to Iran where it will be re-assembled. This includes a 350m3 a day ContiRoll press and everything else from chip washer to finished board.
“We started to feel the downturn in 2008 and business has been quite quiet this year,” said Mr Binder. “Our project times are shorter than the major suppliers so we felt the effects earlier than some others in 2008. Now we feel, again earlier than some others that the market is beginning to come back. I hope we are ‘through the valley’ and beginning to come up again, whereas the big OEMs are still stuck in that valley.
“It is not always between us and [Siempelkamp or Dieffenbacher] but there is now a trend towards one of them getting the order for the continuous press for example and our getting the order for the front end and/or the finishing line.”

Balancing between spiralling costs, availability of high quality raw material and global efforts to preserve natural resources requires the panel industry to change its viewpoints, says Markku Levanen, head of sales at Dieffenbacher in Finland. “In fact, we are talking about changing the ideologies.
“There can be few mill and production managers who have not considered making use of the raw material that is increasingly available and comes with a tolerable price tag – and that is recycled wood material.”
The French particleboard producer Compagnie Francaise du Panneau (CFP), part of the Parisot Group, decided to take advantage of the ClassiCleaner wood raw material cleaning system from Dieffenbacher in its plant, which produces 500,000m3 of panels a year, mainly for the furniture industry.
Prior to investing in this screening and cleaning system, the plant was able to use only a small proportion of low quality chips in its process. The ClassiCleaner is CFP’s response to raw material prices and availability.
“The ClassiCleaner has allowed CFP to significantly increase the proportion of low quality chips that it uses because heavy contaminants such as stones and glass, and light impurities, are now efficiently separated from the raw material, the end-product quality is better and the lifetime of the flaking equipment is longer,” said Mr Levanen. “Light impurities such as plastic foils and thin papers do not affect the panel quality any more either.”
Philippe Valdenaire, technical director of Parisot Group, said: “We chose the ClassiCleaner because of its compact size, screening accuracy, ability to separate light and heavy impurities and its low operating costs. An additional benefit has been the tidy surroundings.
“Since the installation in June [2009], we have been able to increase the use of low quality raw material. The efficient chip cleaning enables us to further increase the use of recycled raw material without compromising the board quality. In addition, we are impressed by the very low wood loss in the cleaning process”.
The ClassiCleaner provides for a screening result according to the overall process needs and the cleaning is carried out only to the enriched sub-flows. This innovative operating principle makes the patent-protected ClassiCleaner both efficient and economical, claims
Dieffenbacher.
The particleboard industry is not the only one struggling with the availability and quality of wood raw material; the pellet industry is seeking the same material sources as the panel producers. Quite logically, what suits the raw material preparation needs of the particleboard manufacturing process also suits the needs of pellet manufacture. Due to this evident synergy, the Dieffenbacher Group now serves the pellet industry as well as the panel industry.
“Chip cleaning is becoming increasingly important also in the wood pellet industry,” said Mr Levanen. “Wear of dies and other process equipment correlates closely to the sand and silica content of chips and flakes, no matter if we are talking about panel or pellet manufacture. The norms of silica content in wood pellets require producers either to closely monitor the mineral quantity of raw material – or to take measures to remove it,” he explained.
In pellet manufacture, screening the chips and flakes into different fractions can bring similar savings in energy consumption to those experienced in panel manufacture and Dieffenbacher says its ClassiCleaner fits well in both processes.

The Ligna 2009 exhibition in Hannover in May 2009 marked a watershed for the company known to everybody simply as ‘Vits’.
It was on May 20, during the show, that Vits Systems GmbH became Vits Technology GmbH, marking a change of ownership of this long-established company – and at the same time, a return to former ownership.
Werner Deuring, an Austrian entrepreneur with a history in the panel machinery industry, first bought the company in 2002. He sold his shares to an investment company in 2006 but remained as managing director.
On March 26, 2009, Vits Systems GmbH went into controlled receivership after battling with liquidity issues in recession-hit markets and a lack of willingness on the part of the banks and investors to inject further funds into the company.
Clearly Mr Deuring still had strong faith in Vits and on May 20, 2009 he reacquired 100% of the shares in the business and renamed it Vits Technology GmbH.
Nothing else has changed substantially. The company still designs and manufactures impregnation lines for decorative papers in the panel industry and supplies converting lines in many other industries, such as automotive filter paper, masking tape and glass-fibre non-wovens.
Resin mixing and blending systems supplier IFA, Vits America and Vits Imaco (the Chinese arm of Vits technology GmbH) were unaffected by the insolvency of Vits Systems.
“The management team is essentially the same as before,” confirmed sales and marketing director Daniel James. “We have had to reduce overall staff numbers across the business due to a large decrease in orders for paper impregnation lines between Summer 2008 and Ligna 2009 and because our other business units, metal treatment and offset printing, have heavily under-performed.”
In fact, in August 2009, Vits divested its metal treatment division, which provided coating for steel and aluminium strip to be used in white goods manufacture (such as washing machines) and in making car bodies, among other things.
“We are now concentrating on our core businesses of paper impregnation – and converting lines (as well as dryers and format sheeters) for the printing industry,” said Mr James. “However, in spite of the staff cuts, all key technical personnel in design, R&D and service have been kept on.”
Working with Mr James are sales managers Jörg Mellin, Mariusz Maciejewski and Peter Hauer.
“Customer contact with sales and after-sales service thus remains the same and the engineers that go out to customers are the same ones that have visited them for 15 years or more – the faces have not changed,” said Mr James. “And this is very important as many of our sales represent repeat business.”
The new company took two orders at the 2009 Ligna exhibition. One was being commissioned in Iran in late September, while the second was still in progress. A sizeable order was received from China in September and another, larger, order came in from Turkey. However, Mr James said, when interviewed in early October at the Langenfeld headquarters, that these orders could only be seen as “spikes”, there being no clear trend in the global market this year, even though more enquiries were being received at the time than at the same time last year.
Vits latest development, the super-fast HighLine, initially previewed at Ligna 2007, has recently been installed and commissioned at an MDF factory in Turkey and received official customer acceptance in early October 2009. The line is capable of running at over 100m/minute, sheeting melamine films for flooring.
The problem in the past has been to achieve such speeds without rewinding at the end of the impregnation line – highspeed handling of sheets of impregnated paper was the difficult part of the operation.
“Due to a new suction cup linear-driven stacking system, developed with the customer, the line has now broken the 100m/min barrier and during the acceptance test actually ran at 105m/minute for a complete eight-hour shift. Nobody has achieved that kind of performance before,” said Mr James proudly.
“Using this new system, and other modifications, we can double the speed of many installed melamine lines, if required. Thus a mill could replace six existing lines with three by simply upgrading them, or it could invest in a new HighLine.”
Phenolic lines are of course capable of running at much higher speeds than melamine ones and Vits had just finished commissioning such a line at a panel mill in Austria. This can run at over 200m/minute, sheeting and stacking directly on to pallets.
Phenolic lines from Vits which rewind onto rolls, instead of sheeting on pallets, already run at speeds of up to 300m/minute, according to Mr James.
Of course research and development (R&D) wait for no man, even in quiet markets, and Vits is working on new systems for intermediate coating between somewhat in the last couple of months and things were now looking quite good. “China seems to be the driving force as far as investment goes at present,” he said.
Meanwhile, resin mixing systems manufacturer IFA in Rain am Lech in Bavaria has experienced slow business in the impregnation field where it is heavily dependent on Vits. However, in other areas, such as building products, diversification over the last couple of years seems to have paid off. The company was recently awarded two large contracts to deliver mixing systems to the gypsum board market.
Vits has had a turbulent time this year but emerged from Ligna with orders and a new owner convinced of its long-term viability – and with the nerve to weather the current storm and to build on a solid reputation in the company’s specialist fields of operation.

Much of the expertise and experience gained by Bison still exists within Binos and the company is still owned by the same branch of the Greten family – Tom Greten is the managing director.
The Binos company specialises in building and upgrading plants for the production of MDF/HDF, particleboard, OSB/OPB (oriented particleboard) and cement and gypsum bonded particleboard. Technology, engineering, automation and manufacturing, as well as installation, commissioning and training of personnel are all part of the service, says Binos.
However, there is more to the company than that, explained Tom Greten when we met at his headquarters in late September.
“We are promoting ourselves as a solution provider – ‘come to us with your production problems and we will create solutions for them’,” he said.
“The first point, though, is often to get the panel manufacturer to admit that he has a problem – then we can help. Maybe they have ignored the problem for some time and don’t want to admit it, or, while they were selling all the panels they could produce they didn’t have time to fix the problems. It is a matter of communication from both sides.”
Mr Greten feels that the current market is actually playing in his company’s favour. With sales volumes severely down for the panel makers, there is more incentive to address costs and efficiencies in areas such as energy conservation, raw material consumption and maintenance costs.
“Once the customer’s problem is identified, we can produce tailor-made solutions and these can involve our machines or a mix of ours and other manufacturers’ machinery,” continued Mr Greten. “This does not necessarily involve a high level of investment as we point out ways to gain improvements economically.
“We also offer a service element and advice. For instance, a blower fan in an air forming head may be blowing much harder than is necessary. Summer and winter [ambient] air have different humidities and we can adjust the dryer air flow accordingly, thus saving energy.
“This could be part of a complete service package, offering a general analysis of the whole factory process.”
A major part of Binos’ business is in the MDF sector and forming is an area of particular attention for the company, having as it does such an influence on final panel quality – and cost.
One instance of Binos combining its own technology with that of other suppliers is in its use of the Dieffensor machine made by GreCon of Alfeld, which is also owned by another branch of the Greten family (Gerd and Ernst Greten).
Originally launched as a detector for foreign bodies in MDF mats to protect the stainless steel belts of a continuous press, Dieffensor now has a much more wide-ranging roll in controlling the forming line, when combined with Binos’ lifting elements. The result is what Binos calls Active Density Control.
The Dieffensor provides an accurate measure of the mat weight and density distribution and feeds this information electronically to the Binos lifting elements under the forming belt. These elements lift and lower the mat and, in conjunction with the scalper, control the complete mass flow of the mat, with two effects: First the control and optimisation of the cross-profile; and second, a more precise and constant production of the length profile. “This system is much more accurate than belt scales,” said Mr Greten.
The objective is more even forming, a better end-product, and a saving in valuable wood fibre.
There are three main business areas for Binos in manufactured machinery: MDF/HDF; mineral bonded boards; and particleboard (including OPB). A fourth business area is in refurbishment and spare parts (related to the Bison history of the company).
For MDF, the company is focused on thin boards, employing the Mende-type (calender) roller press in which the company has considerable experience. It modifies older presses with new rollers of different size, or new frames, and produces output capacities of 50,000 to 120,000m3 of MDF per year.
For fibreboard forming, Binos offers its spike roll sifters and formers. “The sifter and former are key pieces of machinery for producing MDF of less than one millimetre thickness,” said Mr Greten. “The homogeneity of fine fibres in this former is far greater than in conventional mechanical forming heads as the spike roll disintegrates the fibre balls into single fibres before forming the mat. It also incorporates a vacuum steam injection system which gives increased production. The sifter has adjustable air and spike roll speed and also sifts out latex lumps, for example.”
Binos is currently supplying a modified version of its spike roll former to a company called Borisov Drev in Belarus, together with a calender press with a 3.2m drum, and a guarantee that the line will produce 2mm thick board, with the inbuilt potential to produce 1mm thickness.
This is a turnkey project for Binos, which is supplying all the equipment for the line, including spike roll sifter and forming, pre-press, press and blowline blending.
“This project demonstrates that we are a serious supplier to the wood based panels market and this is our biggest project to date,” said the managing director. “We are a strong supplier in MDF lines where product quality is more important than pure capacity. This kind of plant will be well-suited to the world, post-economic crisis.”
Binos claims to be the only supplier of complete plants for mineral bonded boards (gypsum and cement) with capacities of up to 50,000m3/year. It also modifies older lines, particularly in Russia/eastern Europe.
“Our projects range from €850,000 to €4million for modifications and we are currently commissioning a Bison gypsum line in Russia that was originally supplied in 1992 but not installed until now for financial reasons,” said Mr Greten.
In particleboard, Binos offers a way to improve profitability for those companies with older production lines which are no longer competitive in that market.
It does this by offering upgrades to the lines to produce an OSB product called oriented particleboard (OPB) – a product with smaller and thinner flakes than traditional OSB. The mills can then compete with OSB in certain markets for an investment of €2 to 4 million, claims Binos.
“The owners can choose to dismantle and try to sell their old particleboard plant or give it a new life and a better-priced product using the same press and just a new front-end to the line,” said Mr Greten.
Glue kitchens and resin blending equipment are part of the scope of supply for both MDF and particleboard lines. It is the engineering workshop at Springe that enables Binos to carry out repairs, refurbishment and upgrades to a range of older machinery, being equipped with large lathes capable of machining large rollers, for example.
“We have a history of prototyping and this stands us in good stead to analyse situations and provide solutions for our customers,” said the managing director.
This also means Binos has an extensive research and development (R&D) facility with a lot of paid-for R&D activities under way, for companies both within and without the panel making industry. This includes areas such as visualisation, programming and plant control systems.
There are three departments within Binos GmbH: Binos Technology, Binos Machinery and Binos Automation, whose titles speak for themselves.
Tom Greten freely admits that his company is not trying to compete with the big oem suppliers such as Siempelkamp and Dieffenbacher; it does not supply high-capacity lines as they do. Rather, Binos is in the market of smaller capacity lines producing niche products where quality is more important to the mill than quantity, he says.
With this fact in mind, Mr Greten and his team see the current economic difficulties facing the global panel industry as an opportunity for Binos rather than a threat.

Carl Benscheidt founded his business in Alfeld near Hannover in northern Germany making shoe lasts (the wooden ‘moulds’ used to make shoes) and in 1911, commissioned a young unknown architect called Walter Gropius to build him a factory.
Walter Gropius, who went on to become world famous for his ‘Bauhaus’ school of architecture and design, produced factory and office buildings at Alfeld which still look modern today and which are the subject of an application to UNESCO to be listed as a world heritage site.
The shoe last company was known as Fagus (the Latin name for the beech wood out of which the lasts were made). It continues to design shoes and to make shoe lasts today, although plastic has replaced wood and the scale of production is much smaller due to world market trends.
Part of the buildings now house a museum on both their architecture and shoes, which is open to the public.
In 1974, Ernst Greten, great-grandson of Carl Benscheidt, decided on an additional, completely different, business path and founded GreCon as a manufacturer of measurement and safety equipment, mainly for the woodworking industries.
GreCon’s fame in the wood based panel industry today is as a global supplier of inline measurement devices, spark detection and extinguishing equipment, steel belt protection sensors, cyclone blockage detectors, panel surface inspection devices and laboratory testing equipment.
It is also in a joint venture with woodworking machinery maker Weinig in GreCon-Weinig which makes finger jointing lines in a newer building on the Alfeld factory site.
This year saw the complete updating of the whole line of measuring equipment supplied by GreCon and this range, designated 5000 and replacing the 3000 series, was first presented at Ligna in Hannover in May 2009.
This updating/upgrading process involved the complete redesign of some equipment, such as the DAX 5000 laboratory density profile analyser – which received software and hardware upgrades and a new cabinet design – while for others there was just a software upgrade or improvements in calibration.
“We introduced the 5000 series because we had developed a lot of new systems of benefit to our customers. We have had eight orders since Ligna for the DAX 5000 alone,” explained Kai Greten, joint managing director of GreCon.
Obviously, as with any electronic/ computer systems, upgrading of software is a continuous process and has been ongoing since the 3000 series was announced in the 1990s, said Mr Greten. “However, we decided that we had got to the point where we could make big enough changes to justify the launch of a new generation – the 5000.”
Products in the 5000 range include the UPU 5000, which detects and maps blisters and delamination in panels on the line after the press, using non-contact ultrasonic systems.
The UPU 4000 is also offered as a less sophisticated, and therefore lower-priced, alternative.
The DML 5000 is a thickness gauge with laser heads or transducers for use with softer materials, while the DMR 5000 inline thickness gauge is intended for use on panel production lines. It is available with the CT frame to enable it to be withdrawn sideways from the line for calibration or maintenance without interrupting production.
For moisture content measurement inline, GreCon offers the IR 5000 non-contact infra-red sensor for mats before the press and the MWF 5000 for the pressed panel product.   This latter device employs microwave technology and records surface and core moisture content of the panel. Both systems can be used in all process steps of panel production, says GreCon.
Supplementing the inline technology is the MWF 5000 LM laboratory microwave moisture measurement system.
For board weight measurement inline, there is the brand new HPS 5000 with high resolution, measuring each square millimetre of board. “This calculation of weight is based on detecting 100% of the processed wood,” said Mr Greten.
The CS 5000 is aimed at high-speed lines and can have up to10 non-contact heads across the width of the running line. The GS 5000, meanwhile, is a more conventional board scale to measure individual panels or stacks of panels, employing load cells placed under the conveyor.
For surface inspection of panels inline, there is Superscan for laminated panels and this is installed directly after the laminating press.
Just as important as measuring finished board quality is controlling mat quality before it even enters the press.
The Dieffensor was launched at Ligna 2003 as a system to detect foreign bodies or glue lumps in the mat before a continuous press in order to protect the valuable stainless steel belts from damage.
However, developments on this device since its launch have extended its applications considerably, as Mr Greten explained.
“The add-on function of the Dieffensor is weight measurement of 100% of the raw material going towards the press. This is a key feature because it gives measurement in both length and width directions and allows optimization of forming and saving of resinated wood raw material.”
Development of this machine has been carried out jointly with machinery maker Dieffenbacher, which started with the idea of press belt protection.
“Over 30 Dieffensors have now been delivered and development is continuously ongoing,” said Uwe Kahmann, joint managing director with Kai Greten. “We have six people dedicated to the development of this product in our research and development department and have achieved an accuracy of 5g/m2 recently. We are also diversifying into other markets with the Dieffensor, thus further justifying expenditure on its development.”
Research and development (R&D) is an important department for GreCon and employs a total of 20 staff for measurement applications.
In the currently quieter market, the R&D department has used the opportunity to carry out ‘internal research’ on new products, while the company as a whole has taken the opportunity to improve some of its internal systems and procedures.
Another important area of business for the company is in spark detection and GreCon has developed its software version 1.7 this year.
“Large mills have may be 150 detection zones around their factory and they wanted a system to better coordinate those zones – and to cater for add-ons after start-up,” explained Mr Kahmann. The latest generation came to the market in July 2009.
The Alfeld works assembles 8,000 spark sensors a year and these can record incidents to one thousandth of a second for later analysis by control units which come in three ‘sizes’, from four-zone to 16-zone to 150-zone units.
Press fire protection is an increasingly important area too and GreCon has carried out 12 installations since it launched its programme 30 months ago. “Our sensors are more accurate than those of our competitors and can, for instance, distinguish between a spark and a camera flash,” said Mr Greten.
That is good news for a journalist/ photographer who lives in fear of setting off an extinguishing system while gathering a story for these pages!
Recognising that panel mills, like everybody, are having to economise as much as possible, GreCon also offers a consulting service to assist its customers, as well as making its products available on lease or rental programmes to reduce customers’ capital outlay.
“Perhaps the customer likes our equipment but he wants to know the saving potential in his particular factory,” said Mr Greten. “So we will go to the plant, analyse his process, and present a report showing the savings potential we have identified; a fresh look from someone outside the business can often be helpful. We can also provide specialist knowledge to evaluate the databases of our installed equipment and sometimes we can help the production people to make a case to the financial management to get buying decisions made. We call this whole process ‘potential analysis’.”
While the company is headquartered in Germany and all R&D and production is carried out there, it is represented around the world by its own offices.
The latest to open was in Moscow earlier this year (2009). The long estestablished office is Grecon Inc in Tigard, Oregon in the US, which has been going for 20 years.
There is also GreCon Ltd in Newcastle, UK; GreCon China in Shanghai; and sales offices in France, Thailand and southern Germany. Independent representing companies are also to be found in 35 other countries.
Although shoe last manufacture only accounts for around 15% of the group’s business today, GreCon certainly has not lost its roots. Indeed it has proudly maintained and preserved its historic architectural heritage while pushing at technological boundaries with its products for the panel industry.

Bischweier in southern Germany has been home to a panel manufacturing business for just over 40 years, having started particleboard production in 1968 as Gruber + Weber.
In 2001 the factory became fully a part of Kronospan Holdings GmbH and since then the group has poured a lot of money into the site to bring it in line with the group philosophy of efficiency in making the right product for the
right market.
It all began with a multi-opening press line producing particleboard which
could be laminated in a melamine-facing press line.
Family-owned business Gruber + Weber invested in its factory over the years, adding more short-cycle pressing capacity in 1983 and 1993 and additional warehousing in 1998 – a building also intended to house a new cut-to-size plant which was never realised.
The factory closed down in 2001 and was then bought by Kronospan, which restarted particleboard production in January 2002 on the original 10-opening hot press. Production capacity was then 360,000m3 a year.
In the following year, after a lengthy process to obtain the necessary planning permission, the new owners erected a new factory building on the site and installed a Dieffenbacher CPS continuous press line with a new chipping line, screening line and sifters.
The new press was 42.8m long and 2.4m wide and had an initial annual production of 400,000m3.
As the new line started production in August 2003, the old multi-daylight line – also by Dieffenbacher – was closed down; the two lines did not run simultaneously.
Investment continued in 2006 with the installation of a new Schelling panel sawing plant. This produces cut-to-size panels in both raw and melamine faced board and has a capacity of 120,000m3/year.
A short-cycle press line was also brought from Worms in Germany and refurbished and installed at Bischweier, fitted with new electronic controls and wear parts.
The refurbished line in fact comprised two short-cycle presses alongside each other and was originally by Dieffenbacher. The presses were modified and upgraded by Wemhöner.
In a separate building, there is also a Wemhöner short-cycle line from 1994/5.
These three presses together gave the Bischweier operation a surfacing capacity of 24 million m2/year in 2007.
Attention turned again to the Dieffenbacher CPS particleboard line in 2007 when preparations began to increase the line’s annual capacity to 850,000m3.
The equipment installed in 2003 had been designed to anticipate this increase in capacity but a new log yard was required, together with a new chipping line, extended screening facilities and new chip silos.
“Wet chip preparation was completely modified, including the moving floors,” said Oliver Lauer of Bischweier’s technical department.
A new dryer was also added and this was equipped with the latest emissions-cleaning technology in a ‘UTWS’ System; this employs a heat exchanger, dry electric filter and other technology developed by Kronospan to eliminate dust, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and odours.
To increase thermal oil heating capacity for the longer press, a new gas-powered heat exchanger was installed. The company has modified the combustion chamber from the old dryer in order to use that to heat the thermal oil.
In general, Bischweier aims to generate 90% of its energy by burning waste wood.
In order to meet the 850,000m3 capacity target, the continuous press was extended to 52.8m. This was accomplished during the month of July 2008, with removal of the old equipment, installation of the new and extending the press all being completed in one month.
The new warehouse built around the same time incorporates two railway sidings for shipping the company’s production out and for bringing resins in from Kronospan’s Lampertswalde plant and from the BASF factory in Ludwigshafen.
A large part of the site was still undeveloped when Kronospan bought it and there was thus ample room for the company to execute its expansion plans.
Bischweier is in the Black Forest area and there is thus a good wood supply, explained Mr Lauer. Sawmill slabs and small roundwood come from a 100km radius and all Bischweier’s wood supply is certified to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Schemes) standards.
However, there is some problem caused by the rush to biomass energy production, Mr Lauer admitted.
“Pellet producers are competing for the wood supply and some even utilise logs because the biomass energy business is subsidised,” he said.
Chipping employs one Bruks Klöckner 1500kW chipper with a two metre diameter rotor and Bischweier’s chips are sorted into one of three compartments in the chip store, which has a moving floor, according to categories of softwood, hardwood or mixed. The chips are allocated to a compartment from the chipper area control room. This enables some
tailoring of boards to particular
customer requirements.
The sawdust silos are enormous, at 25m in diameter, and with a capacity of 9,000m3 each.
As part of the stringent planning conditions imposed by the local authority, the chipper hall is lined with special sound-absorbing building blocks.
Covered belt conveyors carry the wet chips to the knife ring flakers and to the dosing silos, thus avoiding release of dust into the atmosphere.
The drum dryer has a drying capacity of approximately 70 tonnes of water evaporation per hour actual and was designed within the Kronospan group.
There are seven Pal of Italy oscillating dry screens and two wind sifters by Schenkmann & Piel of Germany (part of the Dieffenbacher group).
The gluing system is by Imal of Italy and this company also supplied the on-the-line quality control measurement
systems.
Forming employs four heads – two for surface and two for core layers.
Minimax supplied the Minifog system which guards the continuous press against fire.
There is a Steinemann Satos 10-head sander to finish the board surfaces.
An underground tunnel is used to take the packs of finished boards under the yard to the new warehouse without risking the outdoor elements.
In the warehouse there is an ingenious stock tracking system in which sensors/transmitters set in the concrete floor ‘talk’ to the fork lift trucks which are connected to the main stock control computer system; the driver scans the label on the pack and the computer tells him where to place it in the warehouse. The same system also enables the driver to locate the correct pack and remove it from stock for a given customer order.
Part of the same sensor system is also used to control the parking of road trucks in the warehouse ready for
loading.
Grades of particleboard produced include E1 (with urea formaldehyde resin) and Kronospan’s own ELE (extra low emission) panels, which fall somewhere between E1 and E-zero for formaldehyde emissions. A special melamine urea formaldehyde resin is used to produce the ELE panels.
A certain amount of moisture resistant board is made, mainly for flooring applications, but this is a niche product, said Mr Lauer.
Particleboard thicknesses of 8 to 40mm are produced and most production goes to the furniture industry with customers in France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany forming the main part of the factory’s customer base, although small quantities have also been shipped to China and other parts of Asia.
Since it started its expansion and upgrading plans in 2003, Kronospan has spent in excess of e160m on its Bischweier operation, raising production volumes of both raw particleboard and surfaced boards, improving the quality of production and ensuring compliance with stringent environmental regulations.
Within a 500km radius the factory can access markets from the Netherlands in the north to Genova in the south and from Orléans in the west to Prague in the east, illustrating the Kronospan philosophy of being close to both its chosen markets and to a reliable wood supply.

It is never easy to build a business from nothing and make a success of it, but Hans-Peter Kleinschmidt has done just that.
Starting from scratch in rented premises designed to assist young companies such as EWS 12 years ago, he worked long hours designing and creating products to build the company which he heads as chairman today.
Boasting a growing range of quality control measurement equipment for use on the production line to give real-time feedback, EWS has itself grown and there is a plot of land waiting to accommodate the company’s planned new factory.
Electronic Wood Systems started life in Hameln near Hanover in northern Germany.
Famous as ‘Hamelin’ in the children’s story of the Pied Piper, who legend says cleared the town of rats, the town will continue to be the home of the company when it builds its new factory on an industrial estate on the outskirts in 2009.
The reserved site is 7,500m2 in area and EWS will build a production/research & development (R&D) facility as well as offices. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2009, with completion in mid-2010.
However, EWS has no intention of becoming a large unwieldy company, says Mr Kleinschmidt.
“There are advantages to being a relatively small and flexible high-tech company. We have leading-edge technology and we enjoy what we do. After all, very experienced technical people have come to EWS from larger companies for a reason – there is more possibility to influence decisions and more involvement in the
company,” he says.
Illustrating this point is the presence of Matthias Fuchs as one joint managing director and Hans-Peter’s son Hauke as the other.
Mr Fuchs arrived in April 2004 with considerable experience in the electronic measuring industry and Hauke Kleinschmidt joined EWS in 2005, also bringing relevant experience to
the company.
Recently, the board was expanded and enhanced with the recruitment of Markus Rückert, who is responsible for R&D (on which the company spends 15% of turnover annually), and Jan Pippert, commercial manager.
Mrs Elke Kleinschmidt is responsible for commercial/human resources and Monika Wilbois for marketing. Other specialist staff cover software development, engineering and technical service.
Among its range of products, the company has produced the Thick-Scan thickness gauges for some time but recently addressed a problem common to all
such instruments: In order to calibrate it, the thickness gauge frame is normally withdrawn from the production line, calibrated and then reinserted.
Now, EWS has installed an additional measuring head outside and alongside the production flow and this calibration track gives automatic continuous calibration to the measuring tracks.
Meanwhile, addressing the need for greater accuracy in measuring weight-per-unit-area on the MDF production line, the company has introduced a calibration method here, too.
For the first time, says EWS, this development takes into account the ‘beam hardening’ effect of x-ray radiation.
“An x-ray is made up of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ beams and the soft beams are absorbed more by the thick MDF mat, thus ‘hardening’ the beam” explains Matthias Fuchs. “For instance, you may have a mat of 20kg/m3 density and an MDF board of 20kg/m3, but the thicknesses will be very different. From this kind of information we can produce a density curve which forms the basis of our calibration and this is patented,” he says. “The common method used to calibrate such gauges is to use various panel samples with known raw density values but this disregards the phenomenon of beam hardening.”
The company’s Mass-Scan X is the solution offered to overcome these problems.
Another innovation is in blow detection. The Ultra-Scan system from EWS uses a patented system of sound resonance which is said to increase the sound penetration through the board a hundred-fold. Thus very thick boards can be measured and the system is rendered insensitive to external noise, heat and steam, says the company.
Mechanical weight scales commonly used at the end of panel production lines need to be the maximum length of panel produced, plus 50% to allow accurate weighing. This makes them cumbersome and gives them a tare weight of up to two tonnes, which means lower accuracy.
Electronic Wood System’s answer is a non-contact board scale called Conti-Scale. This only requires a 300mm space in the production line as it is an isotopic-based system employing several heads across the width of the line. When combined with a thickness gauge, it also gives density distribution information.
Moisture analysers (infra-red, microwave and resistance types), cyclone plug-up detection systems, spark detection systems and the Dense-Lab laboratory density profile systems complete the
EWS range.
In collaboration with Norwegian company Argos Control, the company also offers the Argos Grading System for
surface inspection of raw and decorative-surfaced panels.
Another, recent, example of collaboration is SicoScan. This time, the partner is Siempelkamp, the supplier of complete panel production lines and short-cycle press lines (see p32), which joined forces with EWS in a cooperation announced at the Ligna 2007 exhibition.
SicoScan is a complete system integrating the measurement technology of EWS into the machines, process control and automation technology of Siempelkamp.
Thus mat moisture content on the forming line, weight-per-unit-area behind the mat former, board thickness and any delaminations at the press outfeed, as well as board weight, are recorded by the EWS sensor technology.
The sensors then interface with the Siempelkamp line control software in the central control room and provide the information to the controllers without the need for a separate computer and screens dedicated to quality measuring equipment. The measuring signals are recorded and evaluated by Siempelkamp’s Prod-IQ system, which gathers and coordinates all production information and applies it to the production process, thus optimising control of the line.
The two companies continue to discuss further technical developments in measurement technology, and cooperation in R&D to develop these ideas, while retaining their independence and creativity as separate companies.
“The key is the blue SicoScan box Gauge-Controller made by EWS,” said Markus Rückert. “It is this which evaluates all the data from the sensors and interfaces with the ‘Siempelkamp world’ PLC via data cable. Should that link be severed, the data is still stored safely in the Gauge-Controller.
PiperWare is the software employed by EWS’s systems and is a common structure for all the various gauges. It has the flexibility to be set up for continuous, multi-opening or single-opening press lines, explains Matthias Fuchs. “We spent e300,000 just on developing this software, which makes visualisation as simple as possible for the operators.”
Electronic Wood System’s turnover has increased by almost 30% this year and the future of the company which Mr Kleinschmidt senior founded 12 years ago seems secure, especially with the collaboration with one of the biggest players in the global panel machinery business, Siempelkamp.
So Hans-Peter is planning to take more of a back seat and to hand over control of his company to his young team of experienced people, who will be responsible for the future of the business.

With 2007 sales of e260m and employees numbering 3,700 worldwide, the Leitz Group is a major manufacturer of precision tooling.
Founded in 1876 by Albert Leitz at its present location in the state of Baden-Württemberg, today the company has 34 sales and nine production companies, as well as a global network of around 200 service stations.
Its product range comprises the full assortment of machine-powered precision tools for machining solid wood, wood products and plastics.
The company says it devotes considerable resources to fundamental technological research and that it regards itself as a partner to its customers in developing safe and efficient operations.
Consultancy services as well as sales are thus part of the offering, covering areas such as tool management, software competence and storage. Training courses are also offered to customers’ staff.
After the initial sale, maintenance of the tools in efficient working order, and reprocessing of them at specialist centres worldwide, is another part of the package, with collection and delivery of the tools being handled by Leitz, says the company.
While the company supplies a wide range of tools for the cutting and shaping of wood based panels in general, an area of particular recent relevance is that of lightweight honeycomb-cored panels.
With their thin panel facings and paper-based cores, these panels offer particular challenges when machining the edges, to accept edge-banding for example.
“The industrial production of these lightweight panels requires special production tools,” confirms Dipl-Ing Richard Patsch, manager of research and development at Leitz. “They are very different in their machining characteristics, so in many cases demand specially-adapted tools.”
Of course the main characteristic of honeycomb-cored panels is that they have large cavities in the middle and this means that standard panel sizing saw blades do not tend to give a good cutting result.
Thus Leitz has developed thin-kerf panel sizing saw blades for this application. Leitz also recommends the use of tools with reduced cutting pressure to avoid collapse of the honeycomb.
“The ideal tool for a smooth cut edge is a circular saw blade with aggressive tooth geometry,” says Mr Patsch. This avoids material tear-out and delamination of
the board.
“The steep cutting edge results in a smooth rise in the cutting power – an essential prerequisite for the best cutting results,” he adds.
It is also important that the cutting pressure is always positioned against the outer layer in boards with an open honeycomb structure, says Mr Patsch, adding that it is important to use a scoring saw blade.
“When Leitz developed the new thin-kerf panel sizing saw blades with this cutting geometry, the cutting width was reduced by a third and with it the cutting forces. A range of saw blades with diameters of 250 to 450mm and appropriate scoring saw blades are available,” he says.
When first using thin-kerf saw blades for this application it is important to check the width of the machine riving knife. The standard riving knife may be too wide and may need to be changed, cautions Mr Patsch.
Edgebanding of these honeycomb panels is another specialised area.
In principle, there are two choices when edgebanding honeycomb panels, Leitz has found.
The choice depends on the structure of the surface panels and the honeycomb.
If the former are thicker than 8mm, the edgeband can be applied directly to the honeycomb panel, being glued to the edge of the surface panel. This requires sufficient gluing surface on the narrow edges of the surface panels and high edge rigidity. This process is preferred with work pieces with profiled edges or when high loads are to be accommodated, such as for table tops. Processing in this case is with conventional hoggers, jointing cutters or shank tools with cutting geometry optimised to reduce the cutting forces, according to Leitz.
The majority of the available light construction furniture boards, however, have thin facings such as 4mm HDF. Edgebanding requires the forming of rebates in the edges of the surface panels and applying an edging strip. Strips of MDF, particleboard or hard fibreboards are suitable for the edging strip.
Profiling tools, specially designed to suit the different materials, machine grooves in the face of the edging strip. These grooves must match exactly the profile in the surface panels. The cutting forces that arise from the milling tool must not cause delamination of the honeycomb core or the surface panel. The cut quality to the honeycomb is not critical, but the honeycomb chips must not constrain the application of the edging strip, says the company, adding that either tooling sets of stacked saw blades, or of tools with a staggered cut, are suitable for this operation.
Before gluing the edging strip, the faces of the surface panels are trimmed, either by hoggers or jointing cutters. If the excess to be trimmed is large, then jointing is preferable because of the high cutting forces on the thin panels. Using hoggers can cause the board to vibrate.
“In principle the two machining procedures are different in the power requirement,” says Mr Patsch. “The cutting power requirement for jointing rises linearly with rising board thickness, whereas it declines with hogging. That means that hogging needs less power than jointing to machine board thicknesses. The Leitz ‘DT-hogging program’ offers a suitable range of hoggers for this application.”
Finishing the edge banded edges on lightweight honeycomb panels is carried out with conventional tools and standard machine set-ups. However, to ensure a smooth-radius hogging without vibration, it is important to reduce the pressure from the surface rollers.

Eppingen is not in a part of the world where one would expect to find heavy industry, let alone a world player such as the company Dieffenbacher.
Approached from the Autobahn by minor country roads meandering through agricultural scenery, one is struck by the contrast to the more conventional
industrial cities of north Germany.
The explanation is simple. Jakob Dieffenbacher started with a locksmith business in the town in 1873 and in 1910 moved into the production of hydraulic presses for the fruit, wine and edible oil industries, so that explains the rural
location.
Today the fourth generation of the Dieffenbacher family is running the business, while the fifth is working its way through university to ensure the succession.
Dieffenbacher GmbH & Co KG today is divided into three main business units: wood, forming and operations.
Business unit wood obviously concerns the panel industry.
‘Forming’ concerns the press forming of 3-D items such as car body parts and stainless steel sinks, among many other things, in metal or plastic.
‘Operations’ covers all manufacturing service and logistics for the other two business units.
The company has grown over the years from being simply a press manufacturer into a supplier of complete lines for the panel making industry and it has done this both by internal innovation and by the acquisition of other machinery specialists.
One of the earliest such acquisitions was Schenck Panel Production Systems, which joined Dieffenbacher 10 years ago, bringing with it its expertise in process technology and, importantly, forming for particleboard and MDF lines.
In 2003, Schenkmann & Piel Engineering (SPE) joined the fold, with its expertise in drying proving a valuable addition to Dieffenbacher’s range of competences.
More recently, in 2007, the company bought a minority shareholding in Italian company Instalmec. This filled some more gaps in the ‘inhouse’ product portfolio by adding Instalmec’s mechanical and pneumatic conveying systems, suction, filter and cyclone equipment, rotary valves, dosing and screening systems, separators and gluing systems and blenders.
The latest and perhaps the most significant full acquisition made by Dieffenbacher came this year (2008) with the purchase of a significant part of the former Metso Panelboard company.
This involved two former Metso
locations, at Sundsvall in Sweden and Nastola in Finland.
“This means we now have 75-80% of the panel production line supplied from our own resources,” said Günter Natus, technical director, panel division, and a former Schenck employee.
Dieffenbacher’s purchase of the Sundsvall operation led to the return of an old and highly-respected name in the panel industry – Sunds. With the creation of Sunds MDF Technologies AB, this became the new competence centre for the engineering and the supply of complete front-end systems for MDF/HDF plants within the Dieffenbacher Group.
Its portfolio features fibre dryers and ‘Z-Sifters’, a pneumatic transport system and the new ‘EVOjet’ dry resin blending system. Sunds MDF Technologies’ scope of supply also includes complete doorskin lines.
Meanwhile, Dieffenbacher Panelboard Oy of Nastola brought the engineering and supply of machinery for panel handling, raw material preparation and forming for particleboard manufacture from Metso to Dieffenbacher. The complete portfolio features the ‘Lukki’ intermediate storage system and the complete range of ‘ClassiCleaner’ (WBPI issue 5, 2008, p60), ‘ClassiScreen’ and ‘ClassiFormer’ products. The scope of supply also includes small-capacity
single-opening press lines for
particleboard manufacture.
This left energy plants as the only part of the panel factory which Dieffenbacher did not offer from its own resources.
“So we developed the know-how inhouse by employing the right people and formed a couple of strategic alliances and now we have already sold four systems designed by us,” said Mr Natus.
The biggest such project so far has been for Pfleiderer at its Russian MDF plant in Novgorod, where it has an 85MW system.
“We supply everything on these projects, from the blowline to the finished, packaged panel and also carry out full erection on site.”
In a further move to strengthen its position in energy plants, this year Dieffenbacher entered into a cooperation agreement with Teaford in the US in which it will use Teaford’s heat energy system in some North American projects. Teaford will also become the manufacturer and installer of SPE’s particleboard/OSB drum dyers in the North American market.
Another cooperation agreement is with Swiss-Combi in its EcoDry system to reduce emissions from dryers. Swiss-Combi holds the patents and Dieffenbacher the licence. The key element of this equipment is the heat exchanger, which Swiss-Combi will supply.
The system employs an air-cooled grate and can utilise a mix of fuels as required. Remote online service is also available if required, as it is for all Dieffenbacher’s panel production lines.
“The pressure on environmental
emissions in the US is intensifying and this means we expect there still to be good business even in the current difficult
market,” said Mr Natus.
Ongoing investment at the Eppingen headquarters of Dieffenbacher involves enlarging the manufacturing facilities and refurbishing part of the offices, specifically for the ‘wood’ business unit. This follows an extensive enhancement of the factory in Windsor Ontario, Canada in 2007.
It may seem that the timing of that investment was questionable, but that
factory provided welcome support when certain parts of the CPS continuous presses destined for China were manufactured there when Eppingen was at full capacity and the North American market was quiet.
Also under construction on the Eppingen site is a new warehouse building for the logistics side of the business. With increasing transport costs, this is an important part of the business and involves the efficient movement of parts between the various manufacturing locations and sub-suppliers, as well as to the final customer.
“We have a lot of our annual turnover tied up in logistics and felt that there was room to improve,” said Mr Natus.
Another company near Eppingen shares the Dieffenbacher name and that is Dieffenbacher Zaisenhausen. It is a separate company, run by the brother of Wolf-Gerd Dieffenbacher, ceo of Dieffenbacher GmbH, but the two firms cooperate on many projects as well.
Zaisenhausen specialises in short-cycle presses and finishing lines.
At the beginning of November 2008, Dieffenbacher GmbH had an order book stretching ahead for six to 12 months, but neither Mr Natus nor technical director and customer relations manager Bernd Bielfeldt was confident in predictions of the future order situation, given the global economic uncertainties.
“Our educated guess for new orders next year is that there will be no more than 15 complete new lines and probably no less than 10, worldwide, next year. That’s half of the last two years’ annual totals,” said Mr Bielfeldt.
While admitting that there had been nothing from North America or western Europe in the way of new lines in the last two years, he pointed out that Russia, China, South America and India had shown some strength and suggested there is still a huge demand to come from Russia.
Looking at per capita consumption in the different regions, North America and western Europe, unsurprisingly, come out on top though the product mix is different, with North America being stronger in structural panels.
“India’s per capita consumption is so small it is hard to calculate,” said Mr Natus. “China’s consumption is at 10-20% of western countries but is growing rapidly, mainly in MDF, while Russia is similar but mainly in particleboard.
“So, long-term, there must be huge opportunities for everybody involved, including Dieffenbacher,” he forecast.
Dieffenbacher is supplying the first continuous line ever to Siberia, for a company set up by Malaysian-headquartered group Rimbunan Hijau. The customer will produce MDF near Chabarowsk. It used to be involved solely in logging and shipping the logs to China but now Rimbunan Hijau has decided to go into MDF production. Start-up of the CPS press, which is 2.65m wide x 24m long is anticipated in late 2009, with a capacity of 150,000m3/year.
Another Dieffenbacher customer in Siberia is Partner Tomsk, which is also setting up an MDF line, due to be shipped from Eppingen in mid-2009. This one will be 2.95m wide and 38m long, with an annual capacity of 260,000m3.
“They have the resources and the money in Russia. Five to seven years ago, investment was just by western companies and it still is to some extent, but there is a lot of investment by Russians themselves now – some old-established in the wood business and some new to it,” said Mr Natus.
Dieffenbacher founded an office in Moscow on October 1, 2004 and now feels that ‘OOO Dieffenbacher’ as it is called turned out to be a good investment,
supporting that promising market.
Eighteen months ago, Dieffenbacher also founded an office in India to be present in that market. “We believe the market will grow and we want to be present with our own people,” said Mr Natus, pointing out that all Dieffenbacher’s worldwide offices are staffed by direct employees of the company – they are not agencies – and he feels that this is important.
“Our first continuous press will be shipped to India in the second quarter of 2009 and will be the first in India. It is going to Greenply Industries and will be an 8ft x 28m press with a capacity of 190,000m3/year,” he said.
Of course Dieffenbacher already has a factory and sales/service office in China to serve that large market for the company (WBPI issue 4, 2007, p55).
One opportunity for orders in an uncertain future market could be retro-fits/modernisations of existing plants.
Another is almost certainly niche products such as the insulation board line which Dieffenbacher has supplied to German panel maker Homanit, for example. The line is for Homanit’s Homatherm factory in northern Germany. This was under installation in November. Homanit has also purchased a thin HDF line for its Karlino factory in Poland. This will have a capacity of 220,000m3/year.
Some other recent projects for Dieffenbacher include the Gagarin particleboard plant near Moscow, which produced its first board in October. An LVL line, also in Russia, produced its first billet in October for MLT of St Petersburg.
Meanwhile, Kronospan Jihlava, Czech Republic, produced its first particleboard in August and, said Mr Natus, was running at nominal capacity after one week – the fastest start-up Dieffenbacher has ever had.
In Japan, the Okura particleboard line also achieved acceptance in October, while in the US, Louisiana-Pacific’s oriented strand lumber (OSL) line at Houlton, Maine, which employs a special steam-injection press, received acceptance in September.
To ensure a continuing ability to carry out its manufacturing business, Dieffenbacher employs 50 apprentices at any one time and has a dedicated training area in the Eppingen factory where apprentices learn their skills on a range of sophisticated machines. This not only ensures a continuing supply of skilled people but is also important in an area of relatively low population to encourage young people into their local industry.
The company carries out its own research and development and testing in Eppingen and can also carry out tests for customers, for instance on a new raw material for panel production, in its laboratory within the production area.
Dieffenbacher is still a 100% family-owned company and achieved a turnover of e290m in 2007 (the figure in 1980 was e36m), with 70% exported. It employs around 1,000 people worldwide.
The headquarters may be in a rural location in southern Germany, but it is clear that Dieffenbacher is an industrial concern which operates truly globally.

There are very few manufacturers worldwide of paper impregnation lines to prepare decor and Kraft papers and foils for lamination onto
panels.
Vits Systems GmbH, headquartered in Langenfeld, was founded 80 years ago, in 1928, and is a specialist in such “web processing plants”. In terms of impregnation plants supplied, Vits claims an estimated 70% market share. Its impregnators are also used in the filter paper and other sectors of the paper industry.
Vits also makes process plants for the thermal treatment of strips and foils for the metal industry and is a key supplier of rotary sheeters, dryers and finishing machines such as pre-folders or UV-coating units for the web offset printing industry.
In total, Vits has supplied around 900 impregnating lines over the years and has seen a significant increase in demand
during the boom in the laminate flooring industry in more recent years.
Development of those lines continues and the company was carrying out final testing of its latest technology at the time of WBPI’s visit in late October.
This latest impregnation line is capable of running at 100m/min. Running the impregnation process at that kind of speed is not the major problem – stacking the treated sheets fast enough, and carefully enough, at the end of the line is.
If the treated paper were to be rolled at the end of the line, then the problem is less severe, but most panel industry treaters are required to deliver cut-to-size sheets to
a stacker.
The newly-developed system employs an ‘active guidance system’ in a carefully coordinated choreography to lift the sheets as they exit the treatment line and gently but quickly lay them on the stack.
“In this way, we have increased the speed of the line from 50-70 metres per minute, depending on the paper weight, to at least 100 metres per minute,” said Thomas Niedermaier, managing director for sales at Vits Systems. “Our target is 120 metres per minute and we are confident of achieving that soon.
“Our latest line, called HIGHLINE, was launched at the Ligna exhibition in Hannover in 2007 as a high-speed line and we are now adding to this by de-bottlenecking the paper stacking system.”
The first such stacking system to be delivered was scheduled to go to panel manufacturer Kastamonu of Turkey and to be running by the year’s end (2008).
“We have seen a lot of interest from other customers as well because of the 30-40% increase in line speed,” added Mr Niedermaier.
The current economic crisis must mean that demand for new impregnation lines is going to decrease in the coming months, or maybe even years, and thus Vits is not relying solely on new sales.
“We are now concentrating on upgrading existing lines for our customers – there are at least 600 of our lines out there with potential [for improvement]. It is also important to reduce energy consumption these days, as well as more efficient handling to reduce waste,” said the managing director.
“Heat recovery systems, better insulation and optimised exhaust systems will save 30-40% in energy, plus giving a faster running speed for the line. This leads to the possibility for the customer to replace two lines with one high-speed, more efficient line, thus reducing production costs even further.”
With investment in laminate flooring now decreasing for reasons of global capacity, Vits’ management realised there was a need to diversify, using its long experience in overlaying as a starting point. Powder coating lines were the
chosen route.
“Powder coating is not new – it comes from the metal industry but metal is a conductive substrate so giving it an electric charge is easy,” pointed out Mr Niedermaier. Imparting opposite-polarity electric charges to substrate and powder so they attract each other is the basis for powder coating.
“Another point is that metal can be heated to high temperatures to make the powder coating melt and flow – wood can’t,” said the managing director.
Vits found that no company was offering a complete turnkey line and that they were all utilising components from metal coating lines which did not meet the quality requirements of the panel industry.
“This has led to a decrease in enthusiasm for, though not interest in, the technology,” explained Mr Niedermaier.
“We have thus developed equipment for two essential areas of the line: an oven with a very even heat distribution to the whole work piece, which is patent pending; and specially designed spray guns which are also patent pending.”
Vits has long experience in ovens for drying paper and says that its experience in tight control has been transferred to the powder coating line ovens.
“Also, until now, it has only been possible to coat MDF that has been produced with salt crystals in the wood to give it conductivity. This is more expensive than normal MDF and only produced by a few companies. So, working closely with a partner company producing furniture components in Austria, we have a line running successfully with normal MDF. The conductivity comes from the moisture content of the panel,” said Mr Niedermaier.
“We build the machinery and install the lines, while our partner company is responsible for the development and implementation of the coating technology.”
Mr Niedermaier suggested that there are two great advantages to powder coating.
Firstly, it is emission-free with no solvents, unlike wet lacquering which either has solvents or is water-based, leading to drying problems. He also said that powder is no more expensive than wet lacquer.
Secondly, the powder is a polyester epoxy resin and Vits claims that this gives a high-quality surface.
“It is very scratch resistant, impact resistant, warm to the touch [unlike melamine] and it offers new design possibilities such as metallic glitter finishes and coating of heavily-moulded surfaces, while surfaces and edges receive exactly the same coating,” said Mr Niedermaier. “You can also use the same coating for the MDF panels as for the metal frames – in office furniture for example.”
The powder coating lines are marketed under the name POWTEC. Components to be coated are suspended in the line, which is either 160cm or 80cm high.
Meanwhile, powder suppliers have also seen the potential and have increased their research and development to reduce curing temperatures.
Vits has not deserted its traditional impregnation line markets, as evidenced by the new high-speed line being launched now. Mr Niedermaier also believes that melamine (short-cycle) lamination has a strong future as the only way to achieve structured decorative panels such as realistic wood grain or stone effects.
However, the company is realistic in its assessment of the short-term market and has realised the need to diversify. It also believes it has identified a promising new niche in the market for its powder coating lines.

As at the end of October 2008, Siempelkamp Maschinen-und Anlagenbau GmbH & Co KG had sold 16 panel manufacturing plants during the year, giving it what Ralf Griesche, marketing and communications manager with the company, called “A brilliant year so far”.
This seems a fitting way to mark 125 years of Siempelkamp, which was and remains essentially a family-owned business.
A major new development for the company preceded 2008, when it acquired part of the Metso Panelboard company. This transaction took place on October 1, 2007, so its full effects were not really apparent until this year.
With this purchase, Siempelkamp assumed responsibility for the Metso Contipress (formerly the Küsters press) continuous press and all maintenance for existing Contipresses. The company will also take on the maintenance of the Bison and Mende-type presses supplied in the past by Metso and its predecessors.
Importantly, it also acquired the energy system of Metso Panelboard, which has become Siempelkamp Energy Systems, or SES.
“We have already tripled the business Metso had before in energy systems,” said Heinz Classen, managing director of Siempelkamp Maschinen-und Anlagenbau, confirming the generally buoyant sales of the company in recent years. “There has been a boom for the last four years and we have an order book well into 2009, including 10 orders for our thin board lines since they were introduced in 2006, so we have had good success [in the market].”
However, with the current uncertainty in the global economy, Mr Classen admitted he was not sure how the future will shape up. Nobody is of course.
On the positive side, Mr Classen pointed out that world steel prices seem to have peaked. “This added 20% to our costs in the last three years although we have cut manufacturing costs during that time as well,” he said.
Siempelkamp attributes part of its recent success to the latest evolution of its famous ContiRoll continuous press, as well as its special thin board lines employing that press as part of the whole
technology package.
“Generation 8 of the ContiRoll is not just an upgraded press but a revision of our whole production line for panels; we have made improvements from the complete area of the mat former to the press to the stacking area for finished boards at the end of the line,” said Michael Vogel, manager of ContiRoll press design for the wood processing section of the company.
This rethinking of the whole line is also key to Siempelkamp’s recent concentration on, and successful sales of, thin board lines for MDF, mentioned by Mr Classen.
“Thin MDF with a thickness of 1.5 to four millimetres is increasingly replacing wet fibreboards and thin plywood and the market is demanding that machinery suppliers come up with concepts which ensure safe and economic production of these panels,” said Mr Griesche.
Obviously, the only way to produce such thin panels economically is at very high speed and so this has been a major area of concentration for Siempelkamp in developing Generation 8.
The company now guarantees line speeds of 105m/min although it says its plants are capable of speeds up to 120m/min.
“We have optimised the fibre flow and the falling height of the fibre in the
forming bunker to achieve an even cross-wise distribution and to eliminate clumps of fibre and consequent damage to the steel belt of the continuous press,” explained Mr Vogel.
“The StarFormer spreading head also has very fine gap settings to prevent any lumps getting through into the mat and to ensure an even lengthwise distribution of the fibre. We have achieved a forming accuracy of +/-2% for 3mm boards. There is then a downstream levelling unit to level the mat surface.”
Obviously the crucial phase is now the pressing of this carefully prepared mat and Siempelkamp has modified and enhanced its pre-press to cope with the higher line speeds.
For thin boards only, the company then offers its new compactor, which is installed after the pre-press and before the ContiRoll hot press.
“This has two wire mesh belts which evacuate most of the air from the mat. As the mat is compacted to nominal thickness, any lumps which might still be in the mat are squeezed out,” said Mr Vogel.
“A precise head-cut following a mat dump, if any, enables the ContiRoll to continue at full speed of 2,000mm/sec. An accurate head cut is ensured by a special diagonal saw installed between the pre-press and the compactor for thin board production.”
If the panel maker wishes to make thicker MDF, he can simply open the compactor and allow the mat to pass through straight from the pre-press to the ContiRoll.
Now we come to the Generation 8 ContiRoll itself. For thin board production and shorter presses only, an option offered is to have directly-heated infeed drums, the shells of which are heated with thermal oil. Heat transfer from the stainless steel belts into the mat thus starts as soon as the mat enters the ContiRoll.
Not a new feature, having been available for nine years now, but an important one for thin board production as well, is the flexible press infeed. While the lower hot platen has a fixed geometry, the upper one is flexible and can be adjusted up or down by the hydraulic cylinders to any radius to enhance further de-aeration of the mat and start an optimal pressing process as early as possible. It also enables the achievement of high surface densities, thus eliminating sanding of the finished board, says Siempelkamp.
The press cylinders themselves are the same as those used in the previous generation. However, their number is increased and their position optimised for thin board production, it says.
Another special feature for thin boards in Generation 8 is the presence of pressure distribution plates in the lower half of the press to give greater stiffness and more equal pressure distribution, explained Mr Vogel.
Returning to those pressure cylinders, each cylinder row in the calibration zone is fitted with a position encoder, interacting with the automatic feedback from the board thickness sensors at the press discharge end.
Pressure and distance can also be precisely adjusted, row by row, for the right, inside right, inside left and left cylinders to give even thickness distribution.
“Because of the speed of these thin board lines, we offer a triple diagonal saw after the press, or the customer can opt for a clipper adapted from the carton industry for panels up to 3mm thick,” said Mr Vogel.
The ContiRoll press essentially comes in three sizes. Size 1 has a frame height of 3.7m, while size 2 has a frame height of 5.1m to cope with the higher pressing forces involved when pressing wider boards up to 12ft. Size 2 is also used for very long presses.
Siempelkamp holds several world records according to Mr Vogel. For example, the first press of size 2 at Duratex, botucatu has a 50m ContiRoll for MDF, installed about seven years ago, and this was followed by even longer presses: Huber of Oklahoma has a 60m OSB press and Tolko Slave Lake a 70m unit, again for OSB production.
Now there is a new record, with Duratex again. This press was undergoing installation in November and is 77m long and nine feet wide. It is scheduled to begin producing 2,400m3 a day of MDF in the middle of 2009. However, 77m is just the effective pressing length. Total length is 90m and the overall line length is 174m. Total weight of the press is 2,200 tonnes and, if you really like statistics, the total pressing force is 53,000 tonnes.
A stronger roller rod chain has been developed to cope with these long presses and has more than twice the breaking load of a size 1 press.
At the other end of the scale, Siempelkamp has supplied the first of its new ‘size 0’ four-feet wide ContiRolls to Lishui of China. This press is 33.8m long and is due to start up in January or February of 2009, to produce something over 100,000m3 of MDF annually.
The markets for continuous press lines have moved quite dramatically in a geographical sense in the last 15 years or so.
Western Europe and North America have been less active in installing new capacity, while China of course has made spectacular advances in the last eight to 10 years.
A recent strong market for Siempelkamp has been Turkey, with five complete lines sold in a short period of time. The company has been in the Turkish panel market for nearly 50 years, initially with single- and multi-daylight presses, and supplied the first ContiRoll for MDF in 1994, to Çamsan. Since then, it has sold a total of 19 such plants to Turkey.
Three of the recent contracts are up and running, while a fourth is under construction on site. Number five is in manufacture at Krefeld.
Turanlar, whose factory is about one hour’s drive from Samsun on the Black Sea coast, bought a thin MDF plant to make board of 1.5 to 4mm at 2,000mm/sec. Capacity is 650m3/day at 3mm thickness and the first panel was produced in August 2008.
Meanwhile, Yildiz Entegre is currently installing a multi-opening-press doorskin line supplied by Siempelkamp complete with dies, which is due to start production early in 2009.
Kastamonu’s factory in Kastamonu City has a 7ftx55.3m ContiRoll to produce standard thicknesses of MDF and HDF. It started production in March 2008 and has a capacity of 900m3/day, 18mm thickness basis.
Yildiz Sunta, another major panel maker in Turkey, has ordered a particleboard line which is currently under manufacture in Krefeld. First board from this 7ftx42.1m press is expected in April 2009 and capacity is nominally 2,000m3/day, 18mm basis.
Starwood, also of Turkey, produced its first thin MDF on June 27, 2008 on its 7ftx28.8m ContiRoll press.
Apart from Turkey, Siempelkamp has also seen increasing sales to Russia in the last couple of years as Russian-owned
companies – as opposed to western European panel makers building lines in Russia – have set up production there.
Customers for ContiRoll lines include Ugraplit particleboard, Ivatsevichdrev particleboard in White Russia and Apscheronsk MDF.
The Siempelkamp group is not solely involved in the wood based panels market, but has products in the foundry and nuclear industry and other energy markets. It has recently invested heavily in these production facilities too and this balance of markets should hopefully reduce the exposure of the company to market fluctuations in the panel industry as the group enters its 126th year.