The company, whose name comes from Swiss Hellenic Wood Manufacturers, was founded in 1963 by Mr Panagiotis Iliadis and began by processing tropical wood for the production of sawn timber, plywood, block-board and decorative veneers. Then, in 1969, Shelman entered into the production of particleboard.
In fact, in recent years its main product has become particleboard – and its value-added products – plus some plywood.
The company today has two manufacturing plants: In Vassiliko Chalkis, where the company began; and in Komotini.
In the Komotini plant, particleboard, melamine faced particleboard (MFC) and impregnated films are produced, while in the Chalkis plant, particleboard, melamine and veneer faced particleboard and MDF, veneer lay-ons, conventional postformed and direct postformed products and plywood are manufactured.
The sawmill for tropical hardwood logs, which was also on the Chalkis site, closed down in 2006 due to a shortage of suitable tropical log supply.
Plywood remained a key product for the company for over 30 years, with maximum capacity of 150m3/day reached in 1995/6.
From the installation of the first plywood line in 1964, there was continuous investment in new machinery, culminating in the fourth line in 1989, purchased from Japanese companies Meinan and Taihei (the first such line in Europe), specifically to peel smaller-diameter logs.
Unfortunately for Shelman, the Asian financial crisis of the late 90s, and the currency crisis in Brazil, led to unsustainable price competition and, inevitably, to decreased production at Chalkis.
The switch from importing logs for veneer peeling to importing veneer from Africa and Brazil began in 1997 and today Shelman produces 50m3/day of tropical plywood, all from imported veneers, but this is high-quality material for niche markets.
The Chalkis factory also made block-board from 1969 until four years ago, when it stopped due to lack of demand.
Tropical veneer slicing began in 1970 on three lines, with a fourth added in 1979, but ceased five years ago. The clipping and jointing facilities are still used for imported veneer which is applied to Shelman’s plywood and particleboard and to bought-in MDF panels.
So the main product for Shelman today is particleboard. It has a capacity of 700m3 a day on its newest line, at Komotini – a Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous press line which produced its first board in 2001. The press is 23.80x2.20m.
Komotini also has a 7.5m-long Siempelkamp short-cycle melamine press and a Vits paper impregnation line, housed in its own clinically clean building.
Both the Komotini and Chalkis factories are capable of producing 4 to 42mm particleboard to E1 standard as well as P5 moisture resistant (MR) grade; and fire resistant (FR) with P4 mechanical properties. If there is sufficient demand, they can also produce EPF-S very-low-formaldehyde-emission board as established by the European Panel Federation.
All production is certified to CE and formaldehyde emission standards by the WKI institute in Germany and around 15% is exported in Europe and to the Middle East.
The original site at Vassiliko Chalkis has a total of four particleboard lines (and all plywood and veneer production) although the oldest line is now inactive. This gives the site an active capacity of 430m3/day.
All four lines were supplied by Bison, with Dieffenbacher single-opening presses, and the latest was installed in 1992. The three active presses are 7.6, 6.2 and 14.8m long and all are 1.85m wide.
“We built this whole business with the philosophy that we had to produce one of the best-quality particleboards,” said George Kalamaras, technical director of Shelman, who joined the company in 1979. “We sent a team of production and laboratory personnel to Germany for six months’ training with Bison and we set out to equip the factory with first class machinery and personnel to make a first class product with any quality of raw materials and with quality control. We achieved those targets.”
Mr Kalamaras is very proud of the attention to detail in both Shelman factories and claims excellent mechanical properties for the boards and an E1 formaldehyde emission standard since 1984.
“A big part of our achievement on formaldehyde is down to our cooperation with our partners, Chimar Hellas, since that time,” said the technical director.
“Also, particle preparation is a ‘religion’ for us,” he continued. “There are two main points: an optimum mixture of wood; and the geometry of the particles. We are experts in the art of particle preparation and have our own special way of doing it. The average and maximum thickness of the particles is part of this and we check, separately, in our laboratory every day, the result from each flaker for the thickness and slenderness ratio. These are very important factors in the quality of particles – and they are what particleboard is made from after all.”
Eighty percent of the raw material at Chalkis is recycled wood, which Mr Kalamaras said is cleaned very thoroughly.
“As the capacity of our factory is not very big, we can maintain our quality and that quality is well-known in Greece and in neighbouring countries such as in the Balkans and the Middle East.”
Value-adding is important to Shelman and 90% of production is surfaced with melamine films, using paper impregnated on the Vits line at the Komotini factory.
Chalkis has two Siempelkamp and one Wemhoner short-cycle press lines. There is also a postforming line with Homag machining and another Wemhoner press; and two direct postforming lines; while veneering of particleboard and MDF is also carried out, using imported sliced veneer.
“We have recently invested a lot of money in environmental processes, too, and are ISO14001 certified by TüV. This included installing a WESP (wet electrostatic precipitator) from EWK in 2006 and an industrial waste water treatment plant employing biological and chemical treatment,” said Mr Kalamaras.
A very unusual feature of this large, 400,000m2, site located on an island just off the east coast of Greece, within 80km of Athens, is that it has its own private harbour which can serve three 30,000- tonne ships simultaneously for the export of finished goods and the import of raw materials and traded products.
In addition to its own manufactured products, Shelman also trades in Scandinavian and Russian solid wood (lumber) and trades in MDF panels.
In 2006, Shelman established a new company in Greece, as a 50/50 joint venture with the Sofianos family, called Shelman Sofianos, trading in solid wood and laminate flooring.
In the same year, it bought a 40% shareholding in Sofrom Parquet SA in Romania (also the property of the Sofianos family), which manufactures oak flooring.
Shelman also has two wholly-owned subsidiaries, in Patras and Athens, which trade in all kinds of wood products to the retail market.
Perhaps one of Shelman’s most significant subsidiaries is Greece’s only resin producer, Hadjilucas, of which it owns 85%. It was built by Chimar Hellas.
In a major move for the Greek panel industry, on December 2, 2009, fellow Greek wood products producer Alfa Wood bought around 72% of Shelman’s shares from the owners, the Iliadis family, and the deal was approved by the Hellenic Competition Authority on January 11.
“There are a lot of synergies [between the two companies],” said Mr Kalamaras. “They have MDF production and we have particleboard; they produce veneer in Bulgaria and we use veneer. As a group we will be very strong in postforming and in semi-finished elements for the furniture industry. We also have our own glue factory and are working on new products for board manufacture and impregnation.
“Undoubtedly it [the takeover] will allow us to face with more optimism the difficult years that lie ahead of us,” concluded the technical director.

The Hadjilucas family founded their company in 1946 as traders in pine resins which were distilled to produce turpentine and the gum rosin used in sizing (glazing and stiffening) paper.
They started with a small factory in Chalkis, 80km north of Athens, and later built a distillation process there to produce the paper size themselves, for the paper industries.
With the growth in the wood panel making business in Greece in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Hadjilucas saw an opportunity and became a producer of formaldehyde, still in the Chalkis factory.
Then during the 1980s, the wood industry in Greece started to move north to take advantage of cheaper and more plentiful supplies of wood from Bulgaria and by 1999, Hadjilucas had decided to relocate its production to a site in Komotini in the north of the country where it has a formaldehyde and resin plant that started production in 2000. It was then expanded in 2002 and today has a capacity of 85,000 tonnes a year of resins.
In the meantime, in 1998 the Greek panel maker Shelman SA bought an 85% stake in the company.
“We are the main supplier to all Greek panel makers as well as exporting to all panel factories in Bulgaria,” said George Diorelis, general manager of Hadjilucas when interviewed in his office in Athens in December 2009. “We also expect to supply Kronospan’s new [particleboard] plant in Serbia when it starts production, probably later this year, as there is no local resin supplier in that country.”
That new formaldehyde and resin production facility in Komotini in 2000 saw the beginning of a strong relationship between Hadjilucas and the resin technology specialist Chimar Hellas of Thessaloniki.
“The design of the plant was by Cal Polymers but it was built for us by Chimar, which continues to give us resin know-how and technical support. As a result of this combination, we are considered to be the most reliable and advanced binder system producer in the region,” said Mr Diorelis. “But Chimar does not only contribute know-how, but quality control systems as well – we work very closely together.”
As part of the Shelman SA group, Hadjilucas has now become part of the Alfa Wood group, following the January 11 approval from the Hellenic Competition Authority of Alfa’s takeover of Shelman, and Mr Diorelis sees this as a positive.
“The Alfa Wood takeover is promising for us. If the market grows as we expect in the future, our sales will also grow. There is also a lot of scope to substitute for imported materials.”
“We have the capacity to cover all current and possible future needs of the Greek panel producers. We are also trying to increase our exports and already have a good reputation in the Bulgarian market, currently covering more than 50% of demand there.”
In common with all manufacturing globally, the last quarter of 2008 showed a steep decline in business for Hadjilucas and most of 2009 was lacklustre, according to Mr Diorelis, although he said the last months of 2009 showed some improvement. Again in common with other manufacturers, the general manager expects that business in 2010 will be at a similar level to 2009.
The Komotini plant
There are two production units at Komotini. The first went into production in 2000, while the second started up in 2002. Both were built by Chimar Hellas, using its knowledge and experience in the industry gained over 32 years.
Inside the production building at Komotini there are two 25m3 reactors used in the production of urea formaldehyde and melamine urea formaldehyde (UF and MUF) resins. There are also two cooling vessels in which the resin is cooled for four hours after the reaction is complete.
Also contained in this building are two smaller reactors of 12/13m3, in which paper impregnating resins are produced, and one 15m3 reactor for UF resin only. Finally there is an 11m3 reactor used in the production of phenolic formaldehyde resins (PF), for which there is lower demand in the market.
The two outdoor plants can produce up to 200 tons /day of formaldehyde at 37% concentration.
Methanol from two storage tanks is passed through a heat exchanger and then into the vapouriser where the methanol vapourises and is then mixed with air. This mixture then enters the main reactor to produce formaldehyde gas. The reaction takes place at about 280oC and the gaseous formaldehyde passes through the heat exchanger to heat the inlet of the reactor. In the process, the temperature of the formaldehyde gas is reduced to 150oC.
That gas then passes to the bottom of a 30m-high absorption column, where the formaldehyde passes up the column and is absorbed into water which is fed into the top of the column, thus producing a formaldehyde solution at the bottom. This is then pumped to outdoor storage tanks.
In order to produce urea formaldehyde concentrate (UFC), urea solution is introduced to the absorption column and mixes with the formaldehyde gas. The resultant UFC is then piped to another, separate, outdoor storage tank.
Gases and air from the top of the absorber columns are recycled into the process in a closed loop system, with 70% returning to the blower at the beginning of the system and 30% being burned in a catalytic converter to produce carbondioxide and water.
Some of the formaldehyde solution produced is sold for use in other industries, such as in medical processes.
The actual production of the UF resin is carried out in the indoor resin reactors in a process in which water and UFC are agitated and heated, producing longer-chain molecules (‘polycondensation’) and thus an increase in viscosity of the mixture. When the required viscosity is reached, the reaction is stopped, the resin cooled down and final urea added before final cooling in the cooling vessels with chilled water.
Dimitris Alexandropoulos of Chimar Hellas explained that this plant is unusual in that steam generated by the formaldehyde process is used to produce chilled water at five to six degrees centigrade, instead of using electricity.
Melamine can also be added to the resin to produce MUF, imparting water-resistance to the resultant panel product and some phenol formaldehyde resin is also produced.

In 1982, Antonios Adamopoulos and Christos Agorastos founded their company, called Thessaliki Xylotechniki, at Tyrnavos, 10km west of Larissa in east central Greece.
These two enterprising men still own one hundred percent of the company, which changed its name to Alfa Wood SA in 1999, but it is a much bigger company today, turning over €50m in 2009 in its Greek companies alone; Alfa Wood also has a subsidiary in Bulgaria.
On December 2, 2009, Alfa Wood confirmed the rumours which had been circulating for some time by announcing that it had bought 72.09% of Greek particleboard and value-added panel product producer Shelman SA for the sum of €11m.
This deal was subject to the approval of the Greek competition authorities, but as the vast majority of Greece’s panel consumption comes from imports – the nation consumes 400,000m3 and makes about 130,000m3 of raw MDF, for example – it was unlikely the takeover would be blocked: It was approved on January 11.
Tyrvanos is still the head office of the Alfa Wood group and this is where the company began by producing kitchen cabinets, wardrobes, sofas – in fact any kind of furniture made to customer order.
“After three or four years the company began ‘serial production’ of cupboards and bedroom furniture and realised that it was consuming a lot of veneered panels,” said purchasing manager Dimitrios Lazos “so we bought our first small veneer press and established a veneered panel production line. We then established the Courvoxil company for production of veneered profiles, here in Tyrvanos.”
The market in Greece boomed in the 1990s and Alfa Wood realised it could sell veneered panels and profiles to the market, rather than just supplying its own needs, so it established a sales network around the country.
“We also traded in melamine faced boards, raw MDF, lumber and plywood and the company grew a lot in the nineties,” said Mr Lazos. “In the late nineties we also began to export.”
The increasing sales of Alfa Wood led to the establishment in 1997 of a second factory, in the nearby town of Larissa, followed by the change of company name mentioned earlier.
During the summer of 2000, a third factory was purchased, this time in Bulgaria. The long-established former Ticha Company in Varna produces raw particleboard and melamine faced particleboard (MFC) as well as slicing veneers from European species. It has a single opening Dieffenbacher particleboard press of 23m in length, supplied as part of a Bison line, with a capacity of around 120,000m3 a year.
“We thus became, for the first time, involved in raw board production and veneer slicing, rather than just being a trader and consumer,” said Mr Lazos.
However, there was still a ‘primary’ product missing from the Alfa Wood portfolio and in 2004, the company plugged that gap by buying out an old MDF manufacturing plant in Grevena, Greece, called Pindos SA, and completely renewing it.
The old, former state-owned plant had been closed down by the state and Alfa Wood set about replacing everything from the green end to the finished product by installing a new Metso turnkey-contract continuous press line. Thus the new Alfa Wood Pindos, the only MDF producer in Greece, started production in April 2006 with a capacity of 90,000m3 a year, using wood from the Greek forests, together with sawmill residues.
In 2007, in addition to manufacturing MDF, this facility also started to produce laminate flooring (Alfa Flooring) and to produce veneer and melamine faced MDF.
The veneer press was purchased from Italian firm Orma Macchine, while the short-cycle press came from German firm Wemhöner.
To further add value to its MDF production, Alfa Wood also went into direct printing onto the raw board using a Spanish-made Barberàn line.
Last year (2009) the final touches were added to further investment in the MDF factory with the installation of a new defibrator (refiner), which increased the nominal line capacity to 130,000m3 a year.
“Alfa Wood Pindos is a unique factory in the region, not just in Greece,” said Mr Lazos proudly, referring to the range of value-adding possibilities at the Grevena site. “Wood is expensive in Greece so it is essential to add value to the raw MDF or you go out of business.”
With the Pindos factory upgrade only just completed and new Fischer & Rückle veneer slicing and clipping lines installed in Larissa in 2008, Alfa Wood has already moved on with new investment, in Drama in northern Greece.
Here, the company has created Alfa Wood Nevrokopi, which is to produce wood pellets for biofuels, as well as coloured and non-coloured wood chips for horticulture. The plant is due on-stream in March or April of this year and will consume wood from northern Greece and Bulgaria as the factory is close to the border between the two countries.
So at the end, for now at least, of all this investment in panel products, Alfa Wood trades in furniture direct to the public, makes MDF and particleboard and cuts veneer. The Larissa factory stocks over 30 species of veneer, in four different qualities and 10 thicknesses, all purchased by Mr Lazos who has a love of the material.
The company also melamine faces or veneers both panel types, makes kitchen worktops, postforms and softforms, offers veneered profiles on MDF and plywood as well as veneered or finish foil-faced matching door frames and door mouldings, and produces melamine and veneer edging for panels. And it direct-prints onto MDF. And it makes laminate flooring. And it has DIY outlets.
“The big range of products is our strength, with the high quality and the variety of products we offer under the same roof so to speak; our products are not cheap mass-produced goods.
“Although the unfavourable market conditions brought about by the international financial crisis impacted our business and the Greek market, Alfa Wood managed to maintain the same turnover as in 2009.”
Late payment is a problem endemic in the Greek domestic market, confirmed the purchasing manager.
So why did Alfa Wood decide to buy Greek panel maker Shelman in these economically challenging times?
“The merger creates synergies important to both companies,” explained Mr Lazos. “We make MDF and Shelman makes particleboard and both companies have a reputation for good quality. Shelman also buys MDF and it makes impregnated paper which Alfa Wood buys.”
Shelman also owns Greece’s only resin producer (Hadjilucas), which currently supplies Alfa Wood anyway. Alfa Wood also works closely with resin technology specialist Chimar Hellas in developing the right resin formulations for its products.
“It [the merger] combines the strengths of both companies in purchasing and there will be savings created by the size of the combined companies and some consolidation,” continued Mr Lazos.
“The history of Alfa Wood proves we can deliver results and I believe this will continue with Shelman.”

Acivil engineer called Athanasios Sarantis entered the particleboard business on his own account in 1977 by building his first production line in a small village outside  Alexandropoulis on the Aegean coast in the north east corner of Greece, close to the Turkish border. The company was called Akritas SA.
The main contractor for the line was German company Bison, with another German company, Dieffenbacher, supplying the press. Full production on this 11m single-opening press line began in 1980 and the nameplate capacity was 150m3 per day. The product was, and is today, trade marked Akripan.
In a sign of the future direction for the company, Mr Sarantis bought his first short-cycle press line in 1982. This was a line from Siempelkamp, also of Germany of course.
In 1986, Akritas took up another form of value-adding by installing a lay-up and press line for veneering its own particleboard, and bought-in MDF, panels. The sliced veneer was purchased from specialist suppliers and jointed and pressed at the Alexandropoulis factory, which today has 40,000m2 of production facilities under cover, on a substantial site. Jointing is by Rückle machinery and pressing is by Italpresse. Akritas offers 10 species of veneer, including reconstituted. Sanding of veneered boards is by Imeas of Italy.
Sales and marketing operations expanded over the years with regional offices and two distribution centres in Greece: in Athens and in Thessaloniki.
Further value-adding facilities came in 1997 with the purchase of two postforming lines – one conventional IDM line for high pressure laminate (HPL) and a Homag line for direct postforming of melamine foils and low pressure laminate (LPL).
In a major step for Akritas SA, the company became listed on the Athens stock exchange in April 2000, selling 25% of its shares. This was subsequently reduce to 22% in a buy-back of some shares by the Sarantis family.
Growth in value-adding continued apace with the purchase of a Wemhöner short-cycle press line in 2001, giving Akritas a total of two such lines.
Investments made after the company’s entry to the stock market continued and so 2002 saw the purchase of a new particleboard production line to replace the original Bison line (which was then sold to Russia).
This line was supplied by Dieffenbacher as the main contractor and employed a CPS continuous press of 25m long and 2.2m effective width. Capacity of this line was 1,000m3/day and it was in three-shift operation by end-January 2003.
Forming and pressing was by Dieffenbacher with chipping by Maier (recently absorbed by Dieffenbacher but at the time independent), sifting came from Pal, glue blenders from Imal, both of Italy and dryer from Büttner, Germany.
The major part of the resin supply for Akritas comes from the sole Greek supplier Hadjilucas, which is a licensee of resin technology supplier Chimar Hellas of Thessaloniki. Chimar also supplies ongoing support to Akritas, as it has done since the 1980s. Some additional resin supply comes over the border from Turkey.
Today, theoretical raw particleboard capacity at Alexandropoulis is around 270,000m3, based on producing 2.2m width board; however, most production is 1.83m, giving a lower factual capacity.
Continuing its investment programme, Akritas in 2004 bought a second Wemhöner melamine foil short-cycle press line – this time a double press that can take two panels end-to-end per charge.
The start-up of this line brought the company to an impressive figure of adding value to 90% of its particleboard production.
“With the veneering production as well, we laminate almost 100%, although we do still have some customers for raw particle- board,” said Polychronis Dardabounis, strategic development manager with Akritas. He joined the company in 1995.
“The great thing was that we were now able to sell all our production, which was good quality and well-accepted on the market, especially after we installed the new line. We gained a big market share all over Greece as well as exporting to Cyprus, Turkey, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia and Croatia.”
But growth did not end there. In 2008, Akritas bought its second direct postforming line to increase its capacity at Alexandropoulis.
In the same year, the company bought an old factory and warehouse at Chirpan, in Bulgaria, and is now installing a secondhand Siempelkamp short-cycle press line there. From 2010 this company is known as Akritas Bulgaria.
“Initially at least, we will ship our particleboard from here to that facility and add value to it there. We do not produce raw board there at this time,” said Mr Dardabounis.
When the company built its first particleboard line at Alexandropoulis it was because there was a good availability of wood raw material from a large local forest. However, this is now an internationally protected area as a bird sanctuary. Over the years, Akritas has increasingly relied on imported wood from Bulgaria (the border is only 90km away) and now obtains the majority of its supplies from there, through its subsidiary, although 25-30% still comes from the Greek forest service.
“Bulgaria has a very good state-owned forestry department and, like Greece, has very good policies on sustainability and a good forest management system,” said Mr Dardabounis, who himself has a strong background in forestry and so knows what he is talking about.
Particleboard production at Akritas is currently to E1 emissions standard, but the company is a member of the European Panel Federation (EPF) and plans to produce to the EPF-S standard soon, which equates to approximately ‘E0.5’. Density is normally 670kg/m3 and thicknesses produced are 6 to 40mm.
Akritas manufactures semi-finished furniture components, such as kitchen cupboard doors and worktops, under the ‘Polytheta’ trademark. It also makes ‘Artika’, a special range of products and direct postformed melamine doors, and ‘Evropanel’ lightweight honeycomb-cored panels. ‘Akripan’ is the trademark name of its raw particleboard.
“We produce to mechanical and other technical levels which are well above the requirements of any official standards and we are thus able to obtain a better price for our products – the name ‘Akritas’ means a lot in our markets,” said Mr Dardabounis proudly.
The company is also economically important, being located in a remote area of Greece and employing some 300 local people as well as creating at least 500 outsourced jobs.
Market conditions in 2009 were no better for Akritas – or Greece – than for anybody else. The company saw the market drop by 20-25% over 2008 and expects much the same market conditions for 2010. Payment is a particular problem in Greece, with customers habitually taking very long credit without the agreement of the supplier.
A further uncertainty was introduced to the Greek market in December 2009 with the proposed takeover of Akritas’ rival panel maker, Shelman, by Greek wood products company Alfa Wood. This then received approval by the Hellenic Competition Authorities on January 11.
However, Mr Dardabounis is not too concerned by this development and believes that the quality of Akritas’ production, and the loyalty of its customers, ensures it a healthy future, although prices may come under some pressure, at least in the short term.

Chimar Hellas resulted from the merger of four Greek companies formerly integrated into the ACM Wood Chemicals Group. It also integrates the intellectual property and technology rights of these businesses, dating back to 1978.These businesses are: Adhesives Research Institute (ARI) involved in R&D in resins and additives technology for panels and laminating papers; Marlit, a production facility for chemical additives; Delmar, with its technology for waste water treatment; and Chimar, which produces and trades in chemicals and in the procuring of chemical plants.
Following the restructuring of the group in 2003, ACM’s former production plants have become licensees of Chimar Hellas, which continues the R&D work for the wood based panels industry.
Chimar Hellas has offices, laboratories and a pilot plant in Thessaloniki on northern Greece’s Aegean coast, from which it serves resin manufacturers in many parts of the world.

Countries in the European Union have, by and large, an excellent infrastructure of universities that are well-equipped and manned by highly trained staff. Consequently, the European Union generates a huge amount of knowledge each year and most of this is financed at the national level. The European Commission funds another layer of international research that is collaborative in nature.
Inevitably, each country has its own agenda for research because of differing climates, terrains, industries and histories. All COST Actions aim to collect information about, and to co-ordinate, existing nationally-funded research programmes. This is mainly achieved by providing researchers with opportunities to meet, which is effective because if you bring together any group of researchers then they will begin to discuss their work. This leads to the sharing of good practice, the identification of knowledge gaps and the development of collaborative and synergistic projects.

Nobody needed reminding that this was an economically tough year as the delegates gathered at La Cité Internationale des Congrès conference centre in Nantes, France, for the thirteenth edition of the conference which began as the European Panel Products Symposium (EPPS) in northWales in the UK in 1997.
Opening the symposium, Robert Elias, commercial manager of the BioComposites Centre based at the University of Wales Bangor, and organizers of IPPS, admitted that finding sponsors for the social events had proved impossible this year.
However, that did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the delegates who made the most of the excellent restaurant facilities in the historic city of Nantes.
Neither, of course, did it affect the quantity or quality of the papers presented in a packed three-day programme.
The keynote speaker to open IPPS was Kris Wijnendaele, secretary general of both the European Panel Federation (EPF) and the European federation of the plywood industry (FEIC).
He talked about ‘Market developments and challenges for the future’ and presented the statistics for the European woodworking industries as a whole.
“The industry has been hit very hard by the [economic] crisis,” said the speaker, stating that in 2008, particleboard production fell 8.5% on average, while MDF fell 8.3% (the first time there has been a decrease) and OSB 9.5%.
For plywood production, the figure for 2008 in the EU producing countries fell 7.2% compared to 2007, although Russian FEIC members showed an increase of over 21%.
“There are signs that the bottom has been reached in some countries and sectors but it will be some time before we see a recovery,” said Mr Wijnendaele. He went on to point out the rise in costs in 2008, including wood (+4%), resin (+20%), energy (+30%) and transport (+6%).
“Who is helping the woodworking sector in Europe?” asked the secretary general. “The wood sector is largely forgotten while, for example, Canada supports its wood industry.”
Mr Wijnendaele went on to suggest that the EU could: issue general communications on the positive role of wood based products in the fight against climate change; reduce VAT tariffs for residential construction/renovation and ‘Kyoto-friendly’ products; give rewards to consumers for replacing old kitchens, bathrooms etc (like the motor car replacement schemes in some countries); and encourage wood recycling.
“Our industry has a very low general credibility with politicians and regulatory bodies and it is up to the industry [to improve this],” concluded Mr Wijnendaele.
Session 1, ‘Sustainability and sustainable buildings’ was kicked off by John Guerin of Weyerhaeuser Products Ltd, Belgium.
His paper aimed to set a benchmark for the forest products industry for the 21st century, focusing on sustainable forest management (SFM) and certification, sustainability of supply and other key drivers. He used Weyerhaeuser’s mill in Uruguay to illustrate his point, as the company now has 150,000ha growing there, mainly eucalyptus, and aims to have 200,000ha by 2012. The product is  sustainably-sourced plywood.
“The market reality is that markets for sustainable, certified products are growing,” concluded Dr Guerin.
‘Materials and their contribution towards the sustainable buildings LEED approach’ was the subject of Aurelio Ramirez Zargosa’s presentation. He is the founder and president of the Spain Green Building Council (GBC). The council’s members are made up of any companies related to construction, plus federal, local and state governments. It is one of a number of GBCs worldwide.
The acronym LEED stands for ‘Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design’ and is a system for the design, construction and operation of green buildings in terms of water and energy efficiency and recycling.
“We are continually striving to make the good practice of today the standard practice of tomorrow,” said the speaker. The next presenter was Claire Cornillier from the French technological institute FCBA. Her subject was ‘environmental product declaration (EPD) of wood based panels: An answer to sustainable building requirements’.
Ms Cornillier reported on a three-year study commissioned by the French wood based panel producers’ union (UIPP), completed in June 2009. She explained that the EPD is based on life cycle analysis (LCA) and the goal of the study was to produce generic environmental data about wood based panels manufactured in France, using particleboard, OSB and MDF/HDF.
The study produced 12 EPDs for French panel products and concluded that the production process accounts for over 90% of its environmental impact and that to improve the panels’ eco-profile, the industry should focus on glue production as this accounts for up to 50% of the production stage in terms of non-renewable energy.
Dennis Jones of Woodknowledge Wales and the Building Research Establishment Wales looked at sustainability tools used in the UK for construction materials and products and concluded that: “wood and panel products, due to their manufacture from a renewable material, have good to excellent environmental and thermal ratings [and are increasingly viewed] as a sustainable construction material”.
That concluded Session 1. Session 2 was on ‘Indoor air quality and formaldehyde’.
The keynote presentation was by Maureen Gorsen from California, who spoke on ‘Green chemistry: policy and regulation’ and described some of the many initiatives of that state in the pursuit of ‘green’ goals. In this industry, we know all about their response to formaldehyde of course.
Filipe Silva of Porto University, Portugal, described his study of formaldehyde scavengers for the production of low formaldehyde-emission particleboards.
“In order to produce wood particleboard with low formaldehyde emission, there are two strategies,” suggested Mr Silva.
The first was to use resins with a low formaldehyde/urea molar ratio, but this has disadvantages in terms of panel properties; the second is to use chemical scavengers to restrict formaldehyde emission directly in the panels.
Mr Silva reported that, of the possible scavengers tested, a urea solution and a starch offered the most promising results, while a scavenger called Lionite and a sodium metabisulphite scavenger both had good performance.
‘Liquified wood as a formaldehyde scavenger for wood based panels’ was the title of the presentation by Sergej Medved of the University of Lubljana, Slovenia.
The liquefied wood was made from fines of poplar, oak, spruce and beech by a process using polyhydric alcohols.
Mr Medved reported that the addition of liquefied wood at up to 30% did produce improvements in formaldehyde emissions, although there were some negative effects on panel characteristics.
Baha Guezguez of the local École Supérieure du Bois in Nantes (‘home’ of our regular contributor Dr Mark Irle), gave her first-ever presentation, very ably, in English.
Her subject was ‘An investigation of the origin of formaldehyde found in poplar veneer’. This was just the veneers, pressed together without the addition of glue. Ms Guezguez found that an upper limit of release of 100 microgrammes/ m2/hour was an appropriate target for plywood; that wood, though a source of formaldehyde, contributes little to overall emissions from a panel; and that wood can act as a ‘trap’ for formaldehyde and thus has the potential to regulate formaldehyde in the air; and that moisture content influences formaldehyde emission.
That brought an interesting and informative first day of IPPS to a close, followed by a poster presentation.
Day two, Session 3: ‘Plywood and laminated products’ began with a paper from Marek Grzeskiewicz of the University of Warsaw, Poland, on ‘Physical and mechanical properties and burning behaviour of beech plywood made of thermally modified veneers’.
He reported that such veneers reduced the mechanical properties of plywood made from them, but also reduced swelling, water absorption and thermal conductivity.
Coming all the way from Australia, Peter Vinden, professor at the University of Melbourne, reported on his research into microwave-assisted drying of radiate pine veneer.
A similar paper on microwave technology for improving uptake of preservative by peeler cores, from some of his students, won the poster session prize.
The speaker claimed his process was clean and energy-efficient and produced a superior dried veneer quality.
Significantly, the microwaves are directed at the surface of the veneer rather than its core. The process was found to speed up the rate of drying, reduce within- and between-veneer moisture content variability, to moisture-level any wet pockets, eliminate drying defects and to improve quality attributes.
Returning to the theme of thermal modification, this time of birch plywood, Vladimir Biziks of the Latvian institute of Wood Chemistry, took to the podium.
His work was carried out in cooperation with Latvian plywood manufacturer Latvijas Finieris and the aim was to improve the durability properties of birch plywood.
He found that increasing thermal modification temperatures led to decreased mechanical strength, but that in the 140- 180ºC range, resistance to decay increased.
Mathias Lugoye from the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, reported on the possibility of using bamboo mats made of woven slivers as three-ply boards for interior applications and concluded that such panels were in fact viable as an alternative to wood based panels.
‘Enhancing the environmental and mechanical properties of LVL [laminated veneer lumber]’ was the topic of Rémy Marchal of LABOMAP, France.
The objective was to use thicker veneers, and therefore less glue, without adversely affecting the mechanical properties of the LVL due to veneer lathe checking.
The preliminary results were promising, reported Mr Marchal, though further work is required and is under way.
Session 4 turned delegates’ attention to ‘Lightweight panels’ and began with a presentation by Maxim Peretolchin of chemicals giant BASF, Germany, on the company’s Kaurit Light polymer.
The polymer was foamed and added to the core layer material of particleboard and was found to reduce the weight of the board by 30%, using conventional particleboard-making machinery.
‘Perceptions of Austrian furniture customers of lightweight materials’ was the title of a paper by Asta Eder of Wood K Plus. This project is ongoing to the end of 2009, but initial conclusions were that lightweight panels had high potential for substitution in kitchen worktops, but only medium potential in carcases for kitchen and office furniture; and low potential in office desk tops.
The next speaker was Max Britzke of Dresden University of Technology, Germany. His paper was on ‘The continuous production of sandwich panels with paper honeycomb core for furniture applications’.
Mr Britzke pointed out that such sandwich panels are not new, but are often produced non- or quasi-continuously and with framing in them and with typically 3mm particleboard or fibreboard faces.
His project investigated using thinner faces, such as 0.7mm continuous pressure laminate (CPL), which is supplied on rolls and which, with ‘endless’ strips of honeycomb core, can be used in a fully continuous process.
While the project produced good panels economically, additional work is to be carried out on appropriate adhesives – and applicators for them.
Session 5, ‘Machinery, process control and machining’ began with another keynote speech, this time from Jussi Silventoinen of INDUFOR OY, Finland.
His paper was entitled ‘Wood products benchmarking – a tool for better performance’.
“Benchmarking is the process of comparing the cost, cycle time, productivity or quality of a specific process or method to another that is widely considered to be an industry best or relevant practice,” said Mr Silventoinen. “only by knowing where you are now can you tell where you need to go.”
A good benchmarking study must be designed for a specific purpose or area of the business and you must decide the parameters in advance, advised the speaker, saying that “the final aim is profitability”.
‘High energy and maintenance savings by improving tribology in continuous MDF/OSB and particleboard presses’ was presented by Achin Offermann of Idemitsu Lube Europe, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Idemitsu is a producer of specialized lubricants for the chains and rollers of continuous presses and Mr Offermann claimed significant energy, oil and maintenance savings on presses using his company’s lubricants.
Jorge Martins from the University of Porto, Portugal, spoke about the “Effects of formaldehyde scavengers on the machining of particleboard’, testing boards made using several different scavengers, and concluded that they have a much lower influence on energy consumption than do the machining conditions. However, all scavengers tested did lead to a significant reduction in edge quality of the boards. He also concluded that the scavenger with the best performance is urea – and that fine urea has a much better performance than coarse urea.
The next presentation was something completely different as Robert Massen of Baumer Inspection, Konstanz, Germany, described the use of ‘Automatic physical and aesthetic repair of wood panels’.
Mr Massen pointed out that physical and aesthetic defects require different sensors. Hence the development of the ColourBrain multi-sensorial scanner. Combining this scanner with advanced robotics for fully-automatic patching has led to a system capable of invisibly ‘repairing’ wood, stone or other materials.
Jörg Hasener of German company GreCon described the company’s new generation of inline control systems for wood based panel production lines, measuring moisture content, weight per unit area, mat temperature, board density and density profile, thickness and weight of the panel. He also described the Dieffensor system to detect foreign material in the mat before the press.
That brought us to the end of day two of the symposium.
Session 6 was on ‘Wood based panels – recycling and novel feedstocks’.
The final conference of COST Action E49: ‘Processes and performance of wood based panels’ took place immediately before IPPS, in Nantes, and Dr Mark Irle, research director of Ecole Supérieure du Bois, Nantes, and chairman of the COST Action, reported  on progress since the Action started in 2005.
Dr Irle said the challenges facing the industry were: strong competition; raw material supplies, especially wood; and regulation and legislation.
He identified the challenges facing research as: The ‘low-tech’ image of wood; increasing competition for funds among themselves and other sectors; and the credibility gap between science and the industry.
COST Action E49 was intended to bring the European research community together and coordinate national efforts and intensify the interactions between research and industry. Its website, www.COSTE49.org, enables industry members to search for projects and vote for them, thus changing priorities accordingly. The Action organised conferences
and workshops, short-term scientific missions and training schools.
A last-minute insertion of a paper then occurred, with Amine Bouslati of Ecole Supérieure du Bois stepping up to the rostrum at short notice to deliver, very competently, ‘A preliminary investigation of the variation of heavy metal contents in recovered wood’.
He classified recovered wood in France and reported the contaminants were copper, chrome, zinc, cobalt, boron and cadmium and that 80% of recovered wood in France was contaminated to some degree.
This was an ongoing project with the objective of getting a protocol adopted, said Mr Bouslati.
Continuing the recycled wood theme, Marcin Klimczewski of Warsaw University, Poland, looked at the properties of fibreboard pulps manufactured from selected types of recovered wood.
Two types of recovered wood were studied: pallets and packing; and fibreboard from furniture elements.
The first type was found to have shorter fibre lengths and thus was best suited to lower density boards such as insulation board, while the second type can be successfully utilised in both high density (HDF) and insulation boards.
A familiar speaker at many such conferences is Professor Edmone Roffael (retired) of the University of Göttingen, Germany.
His paper was entitled ‘Recycling of UF-bonded fibreboards’ in which he investigated whether conditions used in conventional pulping and defibration were adequate and optimal for recycled fibreboard manufacture, whether the pulps obtained were equivalent to fresh wood pulps, and how the properties of thermo-mechanical pulps obtained from recycled boards can be improved.
Professor Roffael concluded that recycled fibreboard can be used to partially substitute wood in MDF and suggested that an extruder used in place of a refiner for the recycled fibre was advantageous as there was less degradation of the resin than in a refiner and therefore less water pollution problems.
Following the coffee break, delegates settled down for the final session, number 7, simply entitled ‘Resins’.
Dr Stefanie Wielund of the Fachhochschule Salzburg, Austria, opened with ‘Formaldehyde-free dimethoxyethanal (DME)-derived resins for wood based panels. Catchy title.
Her work revealed that such a resin is possible and environmentally-friendly and had the major advantages of being colourless, of low toxicity, easily handled and with a long shelf-life.
However, and I quote: “To fulfil the requirements of the wood industry the reactivity of the adhesive needs to be enhanced!”.
The final presentation of IPPS 2009 was entitled ‘Evaluation of adhesive cure by ABES and IPATES for two UF resins’. It was given by João Ferra from the University of Porto.
Before you ask, ABES stands for Automated Bonding Evaluation System and IPATES for Integrated Pressing and Testing System.
Mr Ferra explained that formaldehyde release issues have led to a decrease in the molar ratio of formaldehyde to urea in UF resins, causing lengthened hardening times and weakened mechanical properties of particleboard. “It is necessary to optimise the synthesis of UF resins, studying how the production process can be adjusted to obtain the desired performance,” said the speaker.
He prepared resins by two methods: (1) the alkaline-acid process; (2) the strongly acid process. He then tested the bonds produced and found that the IPATES test always gave a better performance for resin (1), while the ABES test suggested the differences between (1) and (2) were slight.
Dr Rob Elias brought the 2009 edition of IPPS to a close, summing up two-and-a-half days of information and networking, and indicating that IPPS 2010 will return to its roots in North Wales, UK, to celebrate an important anniversary.
As delegates took lunch together on the Friday of the conference, most expressed satisfaction with the programme and its wide-ranging content, which continued the traditions of EPPS since its inception in 1997.

That the environment has moved to a very high position on the agenda for panel mills in most of the world is obvious. Formaldehyde emission has been an increasingly important topic in recent years, while particulate emissions (mainly dust) have been controlled in most countries and regions for many years.
In the increasingly global warming and energy-conscious world in which we live, further regulations have been added to the panel mills’ regulatory burden, making emissions control not an option, but a necessity, in most countries.
Perhaps most regions of China are the exception to this rule, but it seems unlikely that that situation will remain for many more years.
So, the pressure is on to make all panel mills as environmentally-friendly as possible and that is where Scheuch comes in. In 1963 Alois Scheuch obviously saw this potential market when he took over his parents’ business which was involved in building and in ductwork for ventilation systems. He had just five employees at that time.
The future direction of the company was set the following year when Alois Scheuch installed a simple cyclone as a de-dusting system for a small furniture manufacturer.
In 1979 the company developed the first bag filter and in 1985 the first patented ‘Impuls’ cleaning system for bag filters. The specific design of the nozzles is claimed to offer very effective cleaning, resulting, says Scheuch, in low operating costs for the filters.
“That system is still the basis for our systems today,” said Andreas Köck, general manager for the wood based panel division of Scheuch GmbH. “We still use the same principle, improved and optimized over the years.”
Another major step forward for the company came in 1998, with the development of the SABA biological scrubber system for removing volatile organic compounds such as formaldehyde from MDF dryer emissions.
This is just a quick sample of the company’s development – more detail later. The point is, that development has thrust the company to a turnover of more than 150m in 2008 and a group employee figure of 780, with 640 of those employed in Scheuch’s large manufacturing facility in Aurolzmünster, Austria – an impressive increase since 1963. And the company is still a private, family-owned business with Stefan Scheuch as a joint managing director with responsibility for the technical side of the business and the workshop; Herbert Kendler is responsible for the sales, marketing and finance operations.
Scheuch sees the challenges to be addressed by the industry as: Global climate change; the issue of particulate matter; increasing costs for energy and raw material; production processes which emphasise efficiency; and resource conservation in production processes.
The company believes that its technologies for producing clean air, with a high degree of operating safety and efficiency, are making a significant contribution to solving these challenges by reducing fine dust and pollutants; and by reducing CO2 emissions with energy saving and heat recovery systems.
Scheuch has wholly-owned sales operations in Lauenau and Rudersberg in Germany, in Prievidza, Slovakia and in Canada in London, Ontario.
It also has additional manufacturing facilities under the name of Scheuch sro in Prievidza, which supplies components to the Aurolzmünster factory.
Installation on customers’ sites is carried out by SGS Industrial Services GmbH, based in Dorf in Austria. Scheuch owns 34% of SGS. “We get a good quality service from SGS because they have a good knowledge of our equipment and its installation – we work closely together,” said Mr Köck.
Scheuch operates in five main business areas: The wood processing industry; wood based panels; metals; industrial minerals; and energy.
The company emphasises that it is not just a product supplier to the panel industry but a supplier of systems for both the ‘dry’ side – de-dusting and pneumatic conveying – and the ‘wet’ side – exhaust gas cleaning for flue gas and press exhaust. This includes consulting, project planning and basic and detail engineering.
“No other supplier delivers this complete range of emission control,” said Mr Köck.
Scheuch’s cleaning systems go into the MDF, particleboard and OSB industries and also into finishing lines such as lacquering and coating. They are to be found in just about every area of the panel production and finishing line.
For chip preparation lines, forming, finishing and sanding lines, the company supplies bag filters, circular filters, cyclones, rotary valves, fans and ducts.
For the energy plant it supplies dry electrostatic precipitators (ESP) and fans.
For the drying process, it is again rotary valves, fans, cyclones and ducting and, for emissions, the Scheuch dryer cleaning product programme.
Another patented system is the SWSF fibre sifter, which is an air grader.
Then we come to the press itself where Scheuch supplies its press exhaust system.
The emphasis of the patented SWSF fibre sifter is on high-efficiency separation and part of the patent is the recirculation of the air and targeted delivery of hot air into the system. The company says this circuit is a prerequisite for heating air economically because the outgoing air volume is kept to a minimum and thus a reduced intake of fresh air is required.
It also says that a variably adjustable operating temperature of up to 80ºC further increases press production.
The system also has two beneficial side-effects, says Scheuch. One is in achieving 15% lower pressure loss when compared to sifters which are not closed-loop systems, thus reducing power consumption in the fans. The other is that the fibres are conditioned, reducing moisture fluctuations.
Within the sifter itself, patented opening rollers are claimed to guarantee even fibre distribution and aeration across the entire width of the sifter as the fibre enters. The first sifter level then creates an air curtain and feeds the fine fibre upwards, while the second sifter level is designed to ensure the degree of separation is reliably maintained.
The sifter has an effective output of up to 40 tons per hour and of course conforms to ATEX regulations with regard to explosion protection.
The majority of the equipment supplied by Scheuch is manufactured from scratch in its own extensive workshops in Aurolzmünster. Machine casings, fans and ductwork are all made there from ‘raw’ steel and only items such as electric motors are bought in. The company finds this gives it the quality control that it needs, said Christian Pucher, marketing and communications manager, as we toured the production area. Scheuch has ISO 9001 quality certification.
It is not just the machines themselves that are subjected to rigorous R&D (on which Scheuch spends around €3m a year) to make them economical and efficient to run. The behaviour of the air stream in the bends in the ducting is also analysed and the air stream optimised in the pursuit of reducing abrasion of the pipes; and of reducing energy consumption.
Employing this air stream optimisation, the company says it has achieved savings of  18,000 a year in a suction plant with a 100,000m3 per hour air capacity.
Turning to the ‘wet’ side of the business, Scheuch has a number of product steps for dryer emission control (dryer emissions being themselves necessarily wet of course).
Biological control is mainly related to formaldehyde removal in MDF lines. “Regenerative thermal oxidisers (RTOs) use natural gas, which gives high operating costs and additionally creates CO2 emissions,” said Mr Köck. “With our biological systems we guarantee up to 95% formaldehyde removal.
“The patented BIOSENA combines a WESP [wet electrostatic precipitator] with a biological system and we offer a range of treatments depending on local regulation and the requirements of neighbours of the plant and so on.”
The steps for dryer emission control begin with the SABA biological treatment system which cleans dryer gases with a trickling filter medium.
“Our biological systems are unique in the market and we have made 10 installations to date,” said Mr Köck. “The dryer fumes go to treating filters with a large surface area to wash the formaldehyde into the water system. We then treat the water biologically to remove the formaldehyde and that water can be reused – this is again an almost-closedloop solution.”
Then there is pre-separation and biological treatment which is similar to SABA but has improved dust and fibre separation by a Venturi system and cyclones.
The WESP plus biological treatment produces the BIOSENA system, which combines SABA and SENA.
WESP plus biological activation is called the SENA or the SEKA, with biological treatment without the trickling filter medium.
Finally there is the scrubber, which is purely a washing system.
Some mills in particularly sensitive areas may also be required to install a depluming system which also removes the steam from the exhaust stream, making it virtually, or sometimes totally, invisible.
For this, Scheuch offers the WESP depluming system SEKA. Water is sprayed into the system to collect dust and particulate matter. The steam plume is almost completely removed by mixing the gas, prior to clean gas discharge, with the heated air from specially-designed pipe bundles.
For cleaning press fumes, Scheuch offers the SAP system. This is a waterbased system and the water has to be treated to avoid nozzle blockages or buildup in the ducting. Using a wet system also reduces fire risk as long as build-up of fibre or dust in the ducting is avoided.
“We work closely with Siempelkamp and Dieffenbacher in the design of the press hood,” said Mr Köck.
Extraction also takes place from the sides of the press where a lot of fumes, dust and fibres are expelled. If the dust and fibre get into the press mechanism, it not only represents a fire hazard, but also leads to increased energy consumption.
“To avoid this, we use suction hoods on the sides of the press, particularly at the infeed and outfeed, and have specific designs for particleboard, thin MDF, thick MDF – they are all different,” said the general manager. Recent projects for Scheuch’s systems include Langboard Inc in Willacoochee, US, which ordered a SABA system; Masonite Corporation in Laurel, US (SABA); Yildiz Sunta MDF, Turkey (SEKA); Starwood Orman AS, Turkey (SEKA); Egger, Brilon, Germany (SAP); and Greenply Industries, India, which ordered a de-dusting system.
This Greenply project was for the first continuous press to be installed in India.
In a very real sense, heightened awareness of environmental and energy conservation issues have played right into the hands of Scheuch since its first tentative steps in 1964 and must surely have contributed to the firm’s rapid and continuous growth in turnover and staffing levels.
The kind of equipment that Scheuch supplies is an extra cost to a panel mill and does not directly contribute to it producing any more product, but regulations in most countries require this equipment if the panel mill is to stay in production at all.
On the plus side, products such as the company’s sifter are designed to improve product quality and output efficiency and there is also the potential to save energy, which would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere with the polluting content of an untreated exhaust stream.

In this exclusive report for WBPI, Mike Botting travels to Slovakia to see in action the first fully functioning continuous press to be made outside Germany

Formed by a team of dedicated scientists and engineers with over 20 years’ experience in the development, manufacture and application of formaldehyde-based resins for the wood panel industry, NTL says it provides the industry with “Professional consulting services and innovative practical, applied and proven solutions to improve the quality and efficiency of panel production”.
The company’s resin technology encompasses particleboard, MDF, plywood and OSB manufacture and decor paper impregnation.
Realising that in today’s increasingly demanding and competitive panel industry, mills are constantly seeking more cost-efficient and optimised resin processes in order to be more competitive, NTL says it has developed formaldehyde-based resin systems to increase board production while reducing glue dosage and formaldehyde emissions from both panels and dryers, without affecting the production process and board properties – and without any overall cost increase.
“This is the reason why NTL was formed and is the origin of its founding principles, providing wood panel mills with our state of-the-art, cutting-edge, proven and cost-efficient formaldehyde based resin binder systems,” says Nikos Pargianas, technical director and founder of NTL Chemical Consulting. Mr Pargianis adds that he has worked in field application and technical support for many years and has been involved in projects with some of biggest wood panel plants worldwide.
“We’ve invested heavily in our R&D facility at EKETA Technology Research Institute, which is actively engaged in technological collaborations with renowned research bodies such as the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Chemical Polymerization & Process Engineering Research Institute,” says
Mr Pargianis.
“In addition, strategic relationships are in place with other European universities and technical institutes which allow NTL to follow closely any new technology developments and market trends in the wood panel industry.”
The technical director adds: “NTL’s biggest strength is its R&D, founded on years of industrial experience and the requests of our customers. The primary focus of our R&D is to develop resin technologies which are innovative, add value and are cost-efficient in meeting our customers’ specific needs”.
The modern, fully-equipped laboratory at the Technological Park of Research & Technology Centre in Thessaloniki was completed only last year.
“Our experienced scientists have already helped us to develop innovative resin technology products which have proved superior to some of the biggest competitors in the marketplace,” says Mr Pargianis, proudly.
The company says its R&D is specifically targeted on providing its clients with solutions to their problems on a continual basis, to meet their ever-changing requirements and to anticipate industry trends.
“By relentlessly upgrading and developing resin formulation know-how, and by turning innovative ideas to realisable value-added and practical solutions, NTL can offer unparalleled services to its clients,” claims the technical director.
“Importantly, all these developments are undertaken by NTL with the utmost responsibility for the environment,”
he adds.
NTL says it has a global network of scientists who have hands-on experience in developing and applying a wide range of formaldehyde-based resins to more than 250 wood panel production mills around the world.
“We’re close to our customers because we truly focus on providing them with service, quality and an understanding of their exact needs,” says Mr Pargianis. “Our role is in providing them sound solutions and ongoing technical support, including our complete technical/consultation
services and new resin technologies.
“This service extends from training our clients’ personnel at their R&D and resin plants to practical application of the technology in their panel manufacturing units.”
Mr Pargianis says it is because NTL is a relatively small company that it can give this personal approach to its customers, while larger companies may only be able to offer fixed technology, offering little flexibility to the client.
“In terms of our products we can provide clients with a diverse range of our high-performance formaldehyde based resin and resin additive technology systems which are suitable for virtually all wood based panel producers,” he says.
The company says it can provide a wide range of resins for particleboard such as UF (urea formaldehyde), UMF (urea melamine formaldehyde), MUF (melamine urea formaldehyde) and PF (phenol formaldehyde) for E2, E1, E0 and Super E0 board production, as well as additives such as activators, scavengers and special hardeners.
For MDF, NTL provides a range of resins such as UF, UMF, MUF, PUF (phenol urea formaldehyde) for E2, E1, E0 and Super E0 board production, as well as additives.
For plywood, it offers a range of amino-based resins such as UF, UMF, MUF, MUPF (melamine urea phenol formaldehyde) for E2, E1 and E0 board production and phenolic resins such as PF for hardwood, softwood or tropical wood, PF fast-curing, PF low-cost and additives (hardeners).
In addition, NTL can provide other PF and PRF (phenol resorcinol formaldehyde) resins for laminated veneer lumber (LVL); and phenolic resins (core and surface), or MUF or MUPF for the surface layer (light colour) of OSB.
The company’s range of resin technology also includes impregnation resins and additives such as UF and MF for low pressure laminates. For post forming there are MF and PF for high-pressure laminates, as well as PF for phenolic film, hardeners, plasticisers, modifiers and release/wetting agents.
NTL claims all its resin technologies are environmentally friendly and capable of meeting or exceeding the various performance criteria required by the most stringent European, American and Japanese Standards, ensuring performance to V20, V313 or V100, as well as formaldehyde classes E2, E1, E0 or Super E0.
James Vlachos, NTL’s sales & marketing manager, says: “NTL is well poised to meet all the demands of our customers and as such we offer a wide variety of other product technologies including PF, PRF and RF applications in fibreglass (insulation), concrete forming, medium density overlay, parquet foil and door skin production. We also offer PF for electro-technical laminates, additives for manufacture of flame retardant Kraft and a range of resins used for foil and paper lamination on ‘hot roll’ laminators such as those made by Hymmen and in Gypsum board and plywood.”
Mr Vlachos adds: “We also provide other resins [for other industries], mainly through our associate partner network, while, apart from the wide range of resin technology we offer to our clients worldwide, we also offer our international experience in the engineering of formaldehyde and resin production plants.
“We provide clients with tailored design and procurement for turnkey formaldehyde, resin and resin additive plants of different sizes through our strong association with our professional partners.
“We offer complete process technology, engineering design, procurement, technical assistance, supervision and complete training services to our client’s plant personnel for the construction of formaldehyde production and resin plants for local manufacturing as the most cost-effective alternative”.
Mr Vlachos says the future of NTL is to strive to maintain its strong international presence.
“We are building on our worldwide reliability and proven cost-efficient resins, and on providing clients with just the right solutions wherever they are needed for attracting new licensees in new and growing markets,” he says, adding that NTL has a strong client base in SE Asia and South Korea and is currently embarked on setting up new business licensees in Russia, India, China and Latin America.
“As far as we are aware, NTL is the only company that backs its motto in writing, which simply states: ‘If you
don’t save, you don’t pay’,” concludes
Mr Vlachos.

Kronospan’s SIA Bolderaja Ltd mill on the outskirts of Latvia’s capital city Riga has been the subject of a considerable amount of investment in the last three years.
The name Bolderaja may be familiar to readers of WBPI as we first published a story about the company’s particleboard mill in Issue 5, 2005, following a visit to the factory that June, when Bolderaja was owned by the BBG group of Lithuania.
Kronospan Holdings Ltd of Cyprus bought the particleboard mill in July 2005 and much has changed since then.
What Kronospan bought was a Rauma Repola 19-daylight hot press line with a capacity of around 170,000m3 of
particleboard per year. The press size is 5.7x2.1m.
What it owns today is the same press line, but with an annual capacity of 320,000m3. Investments in wood preparation and the dryer enabled the mill to reach the full potential of that 1975-vintage press, explained Sebastian Ritter of SIA Bolderaja Ltd. Emissions controls were upgraded at the same time.
The original two-head former was replaced with a three-head ClassiFormer the year before Kronospan purchased
the line.
“That hot press is like an old Mercedes car – if you look after it well, it will run forever,” said Mr Ritter. “We also have other multi-opening presses in the group and so have the expertise to get the best from them and produce a high-quality, premium segment product.”
Panels are produced in 12 to 24mm and in sizes of 2750x1830mm and 2440x1830mm.
However, the 28ha site on which Bolderaja sits offered a lot more potential to its new owners than simply producing more, and better quality, particleboard than before.
Thus it was that in mid-July 2007, Bolderaja joined the ranks of European OSB producers, starting production on a brand new continuous press line with an ultimate capacity of 500,000m3/year.
Initially, the line was producing around 300,000m3/year but a second wood preparation area was commissioned in October 2008 to bring it up to that target figure of 500,000m3.
This means that today’s total combined panel capacity for the Riga site is around 820,000m3 and that means the site needs a lot of wood raw material
of course.
The strategic location of Riga was the reason why Kronospan acquired this site. Customers today range from as far away as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, as well as Scandinavia and the UK.
“The available wood supply was another reason why Kronospan bought this site,” said Mr Ritter. “All the wood comes from a radius of 200km from Riga.
“For OSB we mainly use spruce and pine, with some alder and aspen logs. For particleboard we use a small amount of bought-in hacker chips but mainly sawmill residues which are a complete mix of birch, spruce, pine, oak and aspen. We make hacker chips from this material on site and then produce the flakes.”
However, wood supply is only one part of the equation when Kronospan is choosing locations for its greenfield mills, or the ones it purchases, like Bolderaja. The market is the other.
“Riga is very important strategically, being close to the Russian, Scandinavian and central European markets for our products,” said Mr Ritter. “The market in Russia is becoming more and more important for OSB and the demand will be huge.
“We are also supplying other markets which are still growing, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan – they are not huge markets but they are growing.”
Sabine Smith, who is based at Kronospan’s mill at Chirk in the UK added: “Kronospan is concentrated on the emerging markets to the east, while our competitors are more western-
oriented and that is a strength for us.”
That is another important consideration in locating its mills: Kronospan not only looks at wood supply and markets per se, but also at the growth potential of the region.
Another advantage for the Latvian company in supplying Russia is that the rail gauge (the width between the two rails) is the same as in Russia, unlike the western European rail network, so loads do not have to be transferred to different trucks at the border. The sea port in Riga offers another convenient route
for exports.
The new OSB line represents a major investment for Kronospan, with a new building being erected to house the line. The foundations and construction work were completed end-2006 and the installation of the line began soon after, in temperatures of minus 250C!
An old wet process hardboard line, an energy plant and a paper impregnation line were removed to make way for the new line and the entire project was still completed in a very impressive six months.
Dieffenbacher of Germany supplied the whole line from drying through resination, forming and pressing and supervised the building from log yard
to storage.
Project management, plant design, installation supervision and commissioning of the new line was the responsibility of Kronoplus Technical AG.
There are two strand dryers, both supplied by Schenkmann & Piel, a Dieffenbacher subsidiary.
The Dieffenbacher CPS continuous press is 53m long with a maximum effective width of 2.62m. Bolderaja’s standard board size is unusual for OSB at 1.25x2.5m, in thicknesses from 6
to 30mm.
The factory uses blenders supplied by Coil of the US.
“Our main focus is on OSB2 and 3 but we can make OSB4 if required – we have the certificates – but the market mainly demands OSB3,” said Mr Ritter.
Boards can be supplied tongued-and-grooved (T&G) on the edges in a Torwegge line and this is the only form of value-adding carried out on OSB.
The output of the Riga line is branded OSB Superfinish.
In fact this OSB line is more or less a carbon copy of Kronospan’s mill in Jihlava, Czech Republic – and it won’t be the last. Another identical line is under installation in Brasov, Romania and was due to start production in early 2009. Thus Kronospan has three new plants – Riga, Jihlava and the new plant under construction in Brasov, Romania – each with capacities of 500,000m3/year.
In common with other group factories, Kronospan says that these meet all current local and European emissions targets.
Coming back to value-adding, of course the particleboard line offers a lot more potential and Kronospan has grabbed it with both hands.
The Riga factory has three short-cycle press lines for melamine-facing its particleboard (MFC) and the decor paper is supplied by Kronospan’s own factories. Between them, the three lines have a capacity of 40,000m2/day of MFC. Decor papers are supplied by other Kronospan factories.
Kronospan Holdings’ expansion over the years has been relentless as the company has continued to invest in panel production and value-adding, acquiring
and upgrading some existing mills and building completely new ones on greenfield sites.
Whether bought or built, all these mills, sooner rather than later, fit the Kronospan philosophy of efficiency and required product quality standards.
Their locations are not randomly selected but carefully planned to target markets where there is both less competition and increasing demand for the
factories’ products. A look at a map of all the company’s mill locations worldwide amply illustrates that point.
Riga is particularly interesting in
having a particleboard multi-opening press line which is almost 40 years old and a state-of-the-art continuous OSB line on the same site.
However, both lines are run to maximum efficiency, both are attuned to clearly defined markets and both have a reliable and plentiful wood supply.
Perhaps that sums up the ‘secret’ of the Kronospan group’s success as the world’s biggest volume producer of panels, encompassing MDF, particleboard and OSB and a range of value-added products from MFC to laminate flooring.  n

Banking, luxury watches, cuckoo clocks, chocolate, cheese, skiing holidays. Ask anyone what Switzerland is famous for and at least one of these products or services will be quoted – unless you ask someone in the panel manufacturing industry. Then you will very likely hear the word Steinemann.
Established in 1917 producing textile machines, the company started making wide-belt sanders for the panel industry in 1960.
In 1976, it added UV varnishing machines for the graphics industry to its product range and has continued to specialise in those two market areas ever since.
Part of the Stürm Group since 1987, Steinemann Technology AG has grown into a company with a turnover of e45m with 240 employees and a worldwide market to which it exports 98% of its
production.
In January 2003, in response to the continuing growth of the company’s business, Steinemann moved into completely new premises in St Gallen, near Lake Konstanz (or Bodensee) in the north of Switzerland.
This move was only a few metres from the company’s original home, but provided much-needed extra space to accommodate the increasing production demands in both its major markets.
Steinemann’s wide-belt sanding business has benefited from the very healthy demand from the panel industry in the last three or four years, as have most machinery suppliers, and the company has seen its typical delivery time extended from five or six months to 12 months, particularly since the Linga exhibition in May 2007.
“The sander accounts for probably less than 2% of the total project cost for a new panel mill, but its failure can shut the whole factory down,” pointed out Hansjörg Fritsche, vice president of Steinemann Technology AG.
“The customer wants consistent panel quality to his required standard and that is what we offer. But the machine is only part of that. We are a total solution provider with the machines, spare parts, abrasives, service and process support. First-class panels can only be achieved when all these parts of the process are perfectly attuned to each other. And the abrasives themselves are as important to panel quality as the machines are.”
This may explain why the company has established its own conversion plant for these abrasive belts, in Shanghai, going into commercial production early in 2008.
“We will deliver about e2m-worth of belts in this, our first year of operation, supplying to markets such as Asia, Asia-Pacific, Turkey, South Africa, the US and Russia, initially. We have installed the most modern conversion machinery from Italy and are producing a high-quality product,” said Mr Fritsche.
The Chinese operation is only supplying paper- and polyester-backed belts at present, but in early 2009 plans to start converting combination belts, which have a backing that’s a mix of paper and cotton.
Another recent development from Steinemann to optimise sanding quality is the SprintSystem sanding platen. This is a replaceable insert in the platen which can be quickly exchanged as wear takes place. It consists of a carrier of foam, felt or latex, depending on the customer’s specific sanding requirements, with a graphite surface on top, which bears on the back of the abrasive belt.
The two ranges of sander offered by Steinemann are the Nova-H and the Satos.
The Nova-H is the smaller of the two. It has a steel cast frame and can sand panels up to a maximum width of 1700mm.
This range of sanders is also produced at Steinemann’s factory in Jiading, close to Shanghai, where the abrasive conversions are done. The company makes smaller graphics machines here for regional markets as well. The factory employs 65 people.
The Nova-H tends to be popular with plywood manufacturers as well as smaller composite panel mills but machines for plywood sanding are mainly produced in St Gallen as they require some more
special attention.
In October 2008, a Russian customer took delivery of a Nova-H for its plywood plant, having already purchased a Satos eight-head unit in 2001 for its particleboard line.
The Satos, launched in 2001, is in a different league and is produced only in St Gallen. The sanders in this range are all built on mineral cast (siliceous limestone/epoxy polymer) frames. The reason for using this form of construction, according to Steinemann, is that it offers low vibration and temperature-stable machine components, is corrosion-resistant, non-conductive and has good noise transmission characteristics.
Currently the Satos is available in three sizes, with maximum panel widths of 2250mm, 2850mm, or 3300mm respectively.
“We have sold approximately 920 Satos heads to date and over 700 of those are in operation, with the rest on the way to the customer, or in the production pipeline,” said Mr Fritsche.
Steinemann has nine service centres worldwide, in North and South America, western Europe, Russia, China, Malaysia and Australia.
“These are not just offices but our staff are out and about working with customers. We started building up these service centres about 10 years ago, beginning with Malaysia,” said Mr Fritsche, who used to run the Malaysian centre before returning to Switzerland to take up his current position.
Sales manager Michael Schmid outlined the more active markets of recent times.
“The hot markets recently have been Turkey and Russia,” he said. “We have sold at least 150 Satos heads to Turkey so far and they are all big lines with 10 to 12 sanding heads.”.
This is mainly because the customers are finishing their panels with direct printing, lacquering or thinner papers and so need a particularly fine surface, explained Mr Schmid.
A factory in Gagarin, Russia, started up in September with a Satos eight-head machine for particleboard.
In early October, a Nova-H six-head sander was delivered to The Perm Plywood mill owned by the major Russian plywood group Sveza.
“We have sold a total of 16 lines to Russia, including recent orders from Pfleiderer for its Novgorod plant, Rimbunan Hijau for its plant in Siberia, and Ugraplit. All these are due for shipment soon,” said Mr Schmid when WBPI visited St Gallen on the last day of October 2008.
There have also been two recent ‘firsts’ for the Satos: the first Satos machine to be delivered to South Korea was shipped in early December to Kwangon MDF and the first to Japan will go to Okura, for particleboard, in the first quarter of 2009.
Looking to the future, the St Gallen factory employs, on average, 30 apprentices in a special area of the factory which has recently been equipped with a brand new five-axis CNC milling machine just for the apprentices, in addition to other drilling, milling and tapping machinery. The main factory is also equipped with the latest computer-controlled machines.
Senior apprentices take some responsibility for quality control in the factory and many stay on as full-time employees.
While manufacture of some of the larger basic components is contracted out, all contact rollers, and all other kinds of rollers, are manufactured inhouse in St Gallen. The contact rollers are machined with grooves, coated with Arctec chromium alloy for wear resistance and re-machined in the factory.
All components are extensively tested for balance and vibration-free operation. All machines are sub-assembled in the factory and similarly tested before despatch to the customer’s site, where they are united in the full machine.
Many companies are fearful of what lies ahead in these uncertain economic times, but Mr Schmid is sanguine about Steinemann’s market in the coming months.
“Next year [2009] was always going to be quieter after all the capacity established in the last three years and the global economic situation adds to the uncertainty, but I see no reason to expect ‘disaster’ in 2009, although there will probably be some projects delayed – there already have been some.”  n

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