Multi-directional fork lift manufacturer Combilift recently celebrated its 10th anniversary in grand style inviting more than 100 dealers and customers to enjoy some Irish hospitality and witness the launch of a new model.
The Combi-CB is said to match the versatility of other Combilifts in the range. Two years in development, it is more compact than a traditional counterbalance fork lift and its multi-directional capability makes it suitable for handling both palletised goods and long length products.

Additional production cuts are being planned by Stora Enso for is wood products business in Finland, Estonia and the Czech Republic.
The mill closures, staff reductions, efficiency measures and extended maintenance stoppages are supplemented by plans to restructure the Estonian joinery components business by permanently closing the Viljandi mill  and transferring the business to Imavere.
The planned measures and earlier actions already agreed in the company’s operations in Austria, Sweden and the Baltic states would reduce total production by about 1.2 million m3/year.

More than 60 women who work in the Dutch and Belgian timber trades have gathered for the first ‘Wood wants Women’ event.
The event, organised by Dutch timber trade magazine HoutWereld, was born out of an informal search to connect women in the timber trade.
“In the timber sector there are still far more men active than women,” said HoutWereld. “However, in the past 10 years a growing number of women have decided to work in all kinds of companies and other organisations that deal with timber, forestry and woodworking.”
Women who attended work as purchasing managers, administrators, researchers, and in human resources and sales, while some were managing directors.
The goal of the event was to create an informal platform where women in the industry could meet each other for networking and discuss business opportunities. A similar event will be held next year.

Danzer Group, billed as the world’s largest producer of hardwood veneers, has acquired Reholz GmbH, Kesselsdorf, near Dresden, Germany. The company will be integrated into Danzer Group under its current management.
Reholz is said to have developed an internationally unique, patented process for moulding veneers three-dimensionally without cracking. With 3D veneers, it is possible to achieve stable moulds – for example for the furniture and automotive industries ¬– ¬ that are resistant to breakage or bending. Both the structure of the wood and texture of the veneer are unchanged in the process.
By acquiring Reholz, Danzer will be able to offer its customers veneers in 3D version for moulded parts and coatings. At the same time Danzer is expanding its expertise in the field of innovative wooden surfaces.
“Our constant product developments in veneered wooden surfaces, combined with our new wooden surface Vinterio and the patented 3D processing technology open up a variety of new application and design possibilities for us,” said Hans-Joachim Danzer, Danzer Group ceo. 

The 5th International Wood & Wood Products Trade Conference offered an invaluable forum for a cross section of the international timber trade according to organisers.
Held November 13-15 in Guangzhou, China the event included representatives from log, panel, board, lumber, furniture, flooring, stairs and cabinet firms.
A summit on trade policy and domestic and worldwide markets took place as well as organised negotiation sessions for securing business.
The show itself was split into four distinct areas, including raw and processed materials, board, woodworking and Forest Stewardship Council products, as well as an international certified products area to allow Chinese wood producers to establish distribution channels for certified materials.
Visitors were also able to partake in factory visits in the Guangzhou area.

Hardwood plywood and veneer manufacturer Columbia Forest Products has received a US$120m credit facility from General Electric (GE) Commercial Finance Corporate Lending to further its development.
The asset-based credit facility will be used to refinance existing debt and support ongoing working capital needs.
Columbia says it is North America’s largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood and veneer, operating from nine facilities in the US and Canada producing a range of products, including its formaldehyde-free PureBond hardwood plywood.
“In a challenging sector such as wood products, niche players who serve a variety of sub-sectors with superior products and customer service can differentiate themselves and maintain profitability,” said Will Sonnenfeld, timber and wood products industry leader at GE Commercial Finance Corporate Lending.

RoyOMartin and North Pacific have announced a partnership through which North Pacific’s Northern California distribution centre in Napa will have available OSB certified under the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) programme, from RoyOMartin’s new OSB mill in Oakdale, Louisiana.
Gregg Wilkinson, senior vice president of commodities at North Pacific, said his company had recently "taken a strong position to distribute more environmentally-responsible products to the marketplace due to the demands placed on us by our retail customers. . . we are constantly looking for suppliers that have the best green product options.”
North Pacific currently has FSC chain-of-custody certification in half of its 19 distribution centres located throughout the US. Steve Fischer, general manager of the Northern California distribution centre, described Northern California as "the heart of the green building movement.”
Fischer said demand for FSC-certified wood building components had increased in the past year.

Plum Creek Timber Co is taking temporary curtailments at two plywood mills in Montana, according to Forestweb.
The cutbacks also affect four sawmills, which Henry Ricklefs, VP of Northern Resources and Manufacturing, said is reducing production levels by 25%.
Plum Creek is removing 10 to 15% of the combined 280 million ft2 /year output of its plywood mills in Columbia Falls and Kalispell. The downtime at the plywood facilities is being conducted around weekends to take pressure off inventory accumulation, said Mr Ricklefs.
Plum Creek also announced it was reducing shifts at its MDF plant in Columbia Falls, Mont., from four to three affecting 35 employees.

Brazilian panelboard producer Duratex SA has decided to freeze ambitious plans to build a massive one million m3/year medium density particleboard (MDP) line in the face of the worldwide financial crisis.
The Sao Paulo-based company stated that it will postpone the US$592m project for the giant line, scheduled to go on stream by the second half of 2010 at its plant at Itapetininga, Sao Paulo state, for six months..
Duratex has a more advanced project to construct what was billed last year as the world's longest MDF continuous press, a 77m unit, supplied by Siempelkamp for its main MDF plant in Agudos, also in Sao Paulo state.
The eucalypt panel line with capacity of 750,000 m3/year is still due to go into operation next year alongside an existing smaller 190,000m3/year pine based fibreboard line.

Around 150 delegates attended the ‘Wood Futures Conference – Countdown to Zero’ in London’s Royal Festival Hall on November 6.
Organised by WBPI’s sister publication Timber Trades Journal (TTJ) in partnership with the Medite 2016 Forum, the conference addressed the issues raised by The UK government’s statement that from 2016 all new homes must be ‘zero carbon’. Commercial buildings must meet the same target in 2019.
The likely impact of this requirement on the construction industry and its suppliers was examined by nine speakers from architects and designers to housebuilders, government spokesmen and the Carbon Trust, together with lively question and answer sessions.
The international delegates came from timber and panel suppliers, the building and construction industry, design and certification.

UPM-Kymmene Corporation plans to expand its coated plywood production and renew its manufacturing process of base plywood at Chudovo, Russia.
Construction is scheduled to start in early 2009 and should be completed in the autumn.
The Chudovo plywood mill, which has a production capacity of 100,000 m3 of birch plywood, produces high-quality WISA birch plywood primarily used by the construction, transport and furniture industries.
About 30% goes to the domestic market and the rest to markets in Central Europe.
 

Changes to Gulf County, Florida’s building code will allow builders to substitute cheaper materials, including OSB for plywood, after commissioners voted in the recent changes.
The commissioners said the county had imposed more stringent codes than allowed under the Florida Building Code (FBC).
In 2001, Gulf County commissioners agreed to require all new homes to withstand 140mph winds. But now the commissioners want to divide the county by wind zone: 140mph in the south, 130mph in the north.
Also, under the FBC, builders can use OSB instead of plywood. Builders claim that OSB performs as well as plywood in hurricane conditions.

Engineered wood products will take greater share of global building materials market, report forecasts
Engineered wood products (EWPs) look set to take an increasing market share of the world’s growing construction market, according to a report released by Global Industry Analysts Inc.
The report, entitled Building Materials: A Global Outlook, said that, while US construction activity was down, the global market for building materials was expanding.
Increasing industrialisation, and rising living standards in the developing countries of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America, are driving construction growth.
EWPs are scoring over other traditional building materials because of their superior functional benefits, eco-friendly features and low cost.

Columbia Forest Products has achieved CARB Phase 2 certification of is formaldehyde-free PureBond veneer core hardwood plywood.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has filed an administrative complaint against Wisconsin Veneer & Plywood Inc for alleged Clean Air Act violations at its wood veneer, plywood and lumber manufacturing plant in Mattoon, Wisconsin.
The EPA proposed a US$96,041 penalty, alleging WV&P failed to comply with certain requirements of its state operating permit for its wood-fired boiler that emits air pollutants, including particulate matter, into the atmosphere.

Arbec Forest Products was still trying to acquire a Crown wood allocation for Weyerhaeuser’s shuttered 420 million ft2/year OSB mill in Miramichi, New Brunswick a month after confirming its interest in buying the facility, reports the Miramichi Leader.
Arbec’s bid looked like being sidelined after the province's natural resources minister Donald Arseneault hinted the government was considering a non-forestry related opportunity combining the wood allocations of the former Weyerhaeuser and UPM mills.
Mr Arseneault has indicated that Arbec’s proposal, along with others, would be given renewed consideration if that proposal did not go through.
Weyerhaeuser spokesperson Wayne Roznowski said Arbec had signed an exclusivity agreement with Weyerhaeuser, but that it would expire if the deal were not concluded. He also said there had not been "people lined up to buy it. The mill has been on the market essentially for a couple of years now.”

Atlantic Veneer Corporation of Beaufort, North Carolina is cutting 67 jobs from its veneer manufacturing division because of lower demand for decorative wood products in US and international markets.
Atlantic Veneer makes hardwood veneer, lumber and plywood and has about 350 employees, according to the Jacksonville Daily News, which said workers in the company's plywood division were not affected.
President and ceo Christian Weygoldt said he was determined the company would emerge from the current challenging market conditions as an even stronger company positioned for growth.

The fate of K Ply Inc's shuttered plywood mill in Port Angeles, Washington, remained unclear after a former employee presented a business plan to reopen the mill, reports the Peninsula Daily News
On September 19 Josh Renshaw presented his business plan to commissioners of the Port of Port Angeles, which owns the property. He then had to wait for a decision on whether the port would file for a default judgment to allow it to seize the 67-year-old mill, which current owners Klukwan Inc of Alaska closed permanently on April 28, laying off 132 employers.
Renshaw, who is backed by a group of four unidentified Port Angeles business investors, hopes to put 172 people to work producing 5 million ft2 of plywood per month. He said the mill needs to produce about half that amount to break even.

Three Oregon-based timber companies Boise-Rogue Valley Plywood, SierraPine Ltd. and Timber Products Co, have installed millions of dollars in pollution equipment to meet an October federal deadline, reports the Mail Tribune.
Federal law required the companies to eliminate about 168 tons of the 261 tons of hazardous pollutants they release annually, including wood fibres, glues and other compounds used in manufacturing.
White City-based Rogue Valley Plywood ¬¬– a unit of Boise, Idaho-based Boise Cascade LLC – has until December 20 to test newly installed equipment that cost under US$2 million.
SierraPine installed the largest thermal oxidizer ever supplied by a Canadian manufacturing firm, AH Lundberg Systems GeoEnergy division of Vancouver BC; while Timber Products, based in Springfield, installed both a thermal oxidizer and bio-filter to treat air from its plywood and particleboard presses, at a cost of roughly US$3m.
Five other Oregon wood products companies have also to comply with the new rules.

Drevmash, the Russian association of woodworking machinery manufacturers, has joined Eumabois.
It becomes the 13th member of Eumabois, the European Federation of Woodworking Machinery Manufacturers, representing 11 companies from the Russian industry. Eumabois said Drevmash offers opportunities for growth as there are more than 300 woodworking machinery manufacturers operating in Russia.
Drevmash was added to the Eumabois family at the organisation’s general assembly, where president Franz-Josef Buetfering talked up its new promotional campaign, Made in Europe.
“We have now reached the point where we can introduce ourselves to the world as a European industry, while still maintaining the identity of each individual country,” he said.

Kronospan is cleaning up its recycled wood fibre supplies with the new technology designed for the gold mining industry.
The £1m investment in a processor at Chirk, North Wales, is part of a two-stage improvement in the company’s processes.
The machinery, adapted to extract any form of metal from recycled wood fibre, was originally designed to separate gold sediment from surrounding silt using a sensor and air jet system.
Kronospan is also working closely with its suppliers of recycled fibre to improve its cleaning processes to ensure a “purer” fibre arrives at Chirk.
The panel producer currently uses 300,000 tonnes of waste wood each year within its board products.
Most of the fibre comes from packaging waste, which would otherwise be sent to landfill.
The improvement will also help reduce tool wear in the Chirk production line.

UPM-Kymmene is planning to curtail its sawmilling and plywood capacities in Finland in 2009, as markets remain soft.
The company has announced a decline in its third quarter results with sales dropping from e2.47bn in 2007 to e2.36bn, operating profits down from e195m to a loss of e40m and pre-tax profits falling from e144m to a loss of e90m.
This trend has led UPM to reduce production of sawn timber and processed timber products at all of its Finnish mills, with immediate negotiations with the 800 affected staff.
It is also carrying out a 90-day curtailment period at the Heinola plywood mill, as the birch plywood market weakens further.

Following six years stewardship and development of Sonae (UK) Ltd, Tony Hackney has pursued a new role in the timber industry as ceo of BSW Timber plc, said to be the UK’s largest sawmiller.

The new marketing manager of Interprint GmbH is Ulrike Lukas who has taken over the marketing tasks carried out by Elizabeth Zenker who is now trend & market research manager, a newly created position.

Vecoplan Ltd, the wholly owned subsidiary of Vecoplan AG a global leader in advanced industrial waste shredding and grinding technologies, has welcomed Kersten Beib, Werner Schweinsberg and Bill Chamberlain to its growing team of recycling and waste shredding specialists.

Süddekor GmbH, Laichingen has taken over the business activities of WKP Württembergische Kunststoffplattenwerke GmbH & Co, KG, Unterensingen.
The contract covers the purchase of the technical systems, the acquisition of all rights, patents and brands as well as the offer to take over all employees.
WKP is a globally active specialist for finish foils, release papers and melamine films. With this takeover Süddekor is expanding its product range and competence as a supplier for the wood materials surface finishing industry.

The inauguration of UPM’s plywood mill expansion was recently celebrated in Otepää, Estonia with annual plywood production capacity set to increase to 50,000m2.
Work is also ongoing with the building of a plywood coating line.
 “With the coating line in operation, the Otepää mill will be able to coat half of the panels produced,” said mills manager Ando Jukk.
The mill produces FSC certified WISA birch plywood mainly for the transport and construction industries. Birch logs are primarily procured from local forests.

Roseburg has closed Holly Hill MDF facility due to poor market conditions, rising energy and materials costs. The company will re-evaluate in three to six months.

Metso is to supply a new fibre preparation line to Siempelkamp Group for installation at the Art Progress MDF plant in Ukraine which is scheduled for start-up in January 2010.
The greenfield MDF plant will be the first in Ukraine with a continuous press and an EVO Defibrator system, designed for production of 37 tons/hour of unresinated fibre, said Metso.
The raw material is of 100 % pine and the end product is sanded MDF in a thickness span of 3-40mm.
The equipment from Metso includes a debarking drum, a disc chipper, chip silos for storage of chips, a chip screen, a chip washer, a defibrator system, process automation as well as erection supervision, start-up and commissioning.

The Rainforest Alliance SmartWood Program has granted Flakeboard’s Bennettsville, SC MDF plant certification to its Forest Stewardship Council’s Chain-of-Custody (COC) and Controlled Wood (CW) standards.

Georgia-Pacific plans to temporarily shut down its Southern Pine Plywood Plant and Southern Pine Sawmill in Whiteville, North Carolina affecting more than 425 employees.

Norbord Inc has reduced its workforce by a full shift – about 13 jobs – at its Cordele, Georgia OSB plant, reports the Cordele Dispatch.

Great Lakes MDF in Lackawanna, New York seems unlikely to find a buyer, according to a local news report.
Colorado-based American Acquisition LLC acquired the plant’s debt after it closed in January and had hoped to find a buyer to keep the mill in production, but is now talking with parties interested in buying the plant's equipment, or the building, for other uses, reports Buffalo News.
According to VP Don Barrickman, potential buyers said the Lackawanna plant was too far away from its source of wood in Pennsylvania, and this would generate high freight costs. They were also concerned about high lumber costs in that part of the US.

Boise Cascade is laying off 58 workers¬ – about 20% of the workforce¬ – at its Alexandria engineered wood products plant in Lena, Louisiana.
The job cuts took effect from November 2 and company spokesman John Sahlberg said there was no provision for recalling the workers.
Mr Sahlberg said the plant’s production had suffered from the decline in the US housing market and the international problems in the economy.

What is said to be Canada’s largest laminating factory has been officially opened. The new ‘South plant’ at Okanagan Falls, one of two lamination factories run by Structuriam, has a capacity of more than 60,000 board feet per day.
“This new plant is a great leap forward for our company, both in terms of capacity and productivity,” said Structuriam president Bill Downing.
“We recognised long ago that to remain competitive in the wood products industry, we must invest substantially in technological improvements.”

Jim Skinner
In the last issue of WBPI we regret that we inadvertently named the wrong person as the new president of SierraPine. We should have credited the position to Jim Skinner, who has been the company’s chief financial officer since 2000 and was vice president, East Coast Operations, when he joined SierraPine in 1999.

Survey director
Michael Angel Bonilla, new Survey sales director for the Iberian peninsula, will be responsible for the ZOW furniture components fair and woodworking machinery fair Z-mac, to be held in Saragossa from 2009.

ZOW Italy
The eighth ZOW exhibition in Pordenone, Italy takes place October 15-18, 2008, featuring more than 700 companies from over 30 countries.

Medite celebrates
Medite Europe Ltd has had a double anniversary: 25 years ago in September, European production of Medite MDF began in Clonmel, Ireland and September also saw Clonmel produce its six millionth m3 of Medite MDF.

Ainsworth closure
Ainsworth Lumber Co Ltd has announced the permanent closure of its OSB mill in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
“Given a variety of factors, including our business outlook, the structural challenges of operating in this region, and the condition of the mill at the time it was delivered to us by Potlatch, we simply cannot rationalise making the significant investment required to make the mill economically viable,” said a statement.

Arizona Forest Restoration Products Inc (AZFRP), which plans to build an OSB plant in Winslow, Arizona, has further delayed its proposed start-up date and revised its plans.
The proposed plant will now have an annual
capacity of 470 million ft2, down from the 680 million ft2 originally proposed.
In a statement on the company’s website, AZFRP’s president and ceo Pascal Berlioux said the revised production capacity would consume 25.8 million ft3, or 827,000 tons, of green logs annually in the production of high-value speciality OSB or OSL.
The delayed start-up centres on the granting of harvesting licenses which are needed to secure investment in the project.
However, Mr Berlioux stated: “We fully intend to move forward during the first quarter of 2009”.

Chile’s forest products giant Arauco has shelved its plan to build a new 500,000m3/year MDF plant in Paillaco, Chile, due to escalating costs and the ill effects of the subprime mortgage crisis hitting the US construction sector.
The panel plant, which won approval from the Chilean environmental agency Corema at the end of May, was also to include 150,000m3/year melamine lamination line and an MDF mouldings unit. The complex, with biomass electricity cogeneration plant and resin production, was due for start-up by 2009-2010.
Arauco directors decided to postpone the project, set to involve an investment of well over US$200m, after it became clear costs would rise by 20%, or more than US$40m. The highest costs Arauco faced were for buying and shipping machinery from Europe.

Expanding Brazilian panel maker Berneck SA has signed a contract to buy a 414,000m3/year continuous MDF line from Siempelkamp for a new industrial complex it is planning in Curitibanos in Brazil’s Santa Catarina state.
The MDF deal, formally agreed at the end of august, represents an about-turn for the Paraná state-based company which, early this year, said it planned to install a 700,000m3/year medium density
particleboard (MDP) line in Santa Catarina.
That announcement was quickly followed by others from fellow Brazilian panel makers revealing significant new MDP capacity expansion plans, including a scheme by Duratex SA for a huge new one million m3/year line.
Berneck, which earlier this year was due to start up its first MDF line, also a Siempelkamp ContiRoll, at its Araucária plant near Curitiba, aims to launch the newly-ordered second line, with a 40.4m press, at Curitibanos in the second half of 2010.

Andritz has been awarded the delivery of a turnkey front-end package to Pfleiderer MDF OOO for its new MDF factory in Novgorod, Russia.
The scope of supply comprises the complete wood yard (including a RotaBarker), chip washing system, the pressurised refining system­ (which will be equipped with an S2070M refiner) as well as the steel structure, piping, cabling, complete erection and start-up assistance, scheduled for 2009.
In June 2008 Andritz received an order for a pressurised refining system from Guang Dong (Zhanjiang) Medium Density Fibre Board Co Ltd, China for its mill in Guangdong. The system includes a 45/49in-1CP refiner.
This is the second installation at the same site and the 90th pressurised refining system sold to a Chinese customer by Andritz.

A new wood adhesive developed at Oregon State University (OSU) is drawing interest from around the world and is claimed to be leading a major shift away from formaldehyde-based composite wood products.
Portland, Oregon-based Columbia Forest Products is marketing plywood panels bonded with the adhesive as ‘PureBond’, but it is also now being made available to other manufacturers.
One of the first of its type that can cost-effectively replace urea-formaldehyde, the adhesive was originally developed by Kaichang Li, an associate professor of wood science and engineering at OSU, after watching mussels clinging to rocks while being pounded by waves on the Oregon coast.
Research on the chemistry of the mussels’ byssus – small threads which attach them to rocks and other surfaces – revealed a protein with an unusual chemical composition that allowed the mussels to stick tightly to surfaces despite being inundated in water. Later studies discovered that a similar protein could be created by modifying cheap, abundant and environmentally benign soy protein.
In collaboration with Columbia Forest Products and Hercules Inc (now Ashland Chemical), further work was done to turn the basic discoveries to commercial use.
The adhesive is now being used in hardwood plywood,
particleboard, MDF and other wood composite panels.

Flakeboard
certified
Flakeboard has announced that its particleboard and MDF mills, in both the US and Canada, have been certified by the Composite Panel Association to produce CARB ATCM and 93120 compliant material.

Brian Rhoades
Nelson businessman Brian Rhoades has joined Nelson Pine Industries Limited (NPIL) as chief operating
officer with responsibilities for the production of both MDF and laminated veneer lumber.

ZOW China
The Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Centre will host its first ZOW furniture supplier fair on March 19-22, 2009 as the second venue to host the fair in China. It will take place at the same time as the Shenzhen International Furniture Exhibition.

Ceo chosen
Christian Gunther Schwarz has been
chosen as ceo of the Swedspan Group which has recently been formed to produce
particleboard and thin HDF panels to serve the IKEA supply chain.

Danzer and FSC
Danzer Group says it will soon be able to offer African timber and veneer with full Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification.

Cedar theft
A Washington State man has been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment and fined US$37,000 for stealing 27 old-growth western red cedar trees from a 20 acre site near White River. The trees were 400-600 years old.

Uniboard has acquired ATC Panel’s Moncure, North Carolina facility, which will now operate as Uniboard USA LLC, Moncure Plant.
The particleboard and thermofused melamine (TFM) plant produces 276,000m2 of particleboard and value added melamine annually.
Uniboard will also be investing more than US$120m in a state-of-the-art MDF/HDF line there.

The Turkish government is investigating an allegation that US and Canadian mills are dumping OSB in Turkey, according to industry newsletter Random Lengths.
The investigation follows a complaint by Sumas Sun ‘I Tahta ve Mobilya AS, the only OSB producer
in Turkey.

Highly involved in the Russian wood material panel sector for the last two years, Dieffenbacher has just announced its latest project: an MDF line is being planned for the wood processing company Partner-Tomsk and also in the planning stage is an OSB
system for the ORIS company. Both systems are scheduled for delivery in 2009.
Past orders for Dieffenbacher included a new
particleboard machine for Cherepovetsky FMK, a
particleboard machine for the Gagarin Plywood Mill company and an LVL system for the STOD company.
For MDF production, a machine for Pfleiderer is almost ready for assembly and another MDF line is being delivered to the Rimbunan company.

TECO was formally approved as a recognised Third-Party Certifier by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), effective July 18.
Phase I formaldehyde emission requirements of the Airborne Toxic Control measure go into effect on January 1, 2009.
The rule regulates emission from raw panels (hardwood plywood, particleboard and MDF) sold directly into California or used to make goods that are sold in California but also affects importers, fabricators, distributors and retailers.

US timber giant Louisiana-Pacific (LP) has confirmed it will be entering the UK I-joist market in a move which will further intensify the already competitive
battle for market share in the sector.
LP’s move, being led by experienced former iLevel executive Al Huber, comes as Masonite Beams relaunches its UK operation following a e10m
investment and Steico unveils its new national supply network.
The I-joist landscape has now changed dramatically since Finnforest’s takeover of iLevel’s European operations at the start of the year.
“The company has brought me on board to expand LPs international market as Weyerhaeuser [which owns iLevel] is retreating from the international market place and LP wants to fill that void,” said Mr Huber.

Kapstone Paper & Packaging Corporation has completed the acquisition of the Charleston Kraft Division of MeadWestvaco Corporation (CKD) from MeadWestvaco Corporation (MWV).
Under the terms of the sale, KapStone acquired MWV’s Kraft paper mill in North Charleston, a lumber mill in Summerville South Carolina (SC) and chip mills located in Elgin, Hampton, Andrews and Kinards SC, as well as 100% of Cogen South LLC, the mill’s on-site cogeneration facility.
In 2007, the North Charleston mill produced 833,000 tons of saturating Kraft, linerboard and Kraft folding carton board. MWV will continue to provide wood fibre for the North Charleston mill through a fibre supply agreement.
“The acquisition of the Charleston Kraft
Division of MeadWestvaco Corporation is an
important step for our company,” said Roger W Stone, chairman and ceo of KapStone. “It expands our platform, from which we intend to achieve our strategic vision.”
The US$485m base purchase price was adjusted to reflect estimated working capital and capital expenditure adjustments. As a result, KapStone paid MWV approximately US$475m in cash, subject to certain post-closing adjustments. Funding for the acquisition came from borrowing under a new US$515m senior secured credit facility announced on June 12, 2008 plus US$40m of
borrowings from the issuance of senior notes.

Panel manufacturer Norbord, based in Inverness in Scotland, UK, says it has completed a prestigious treble for its
safety, quality and environmental
standards.
The Morayhill plant, which produces OSB, has now been awarded three internationally recognised industry certifications: OHSAS 18001:2007 for its safety management systems, ISO 14001 for its environmental standards and ISO 9000 for its quality management systems.
General manager at Norbord Inverness, Cam Lewis, said: “This is a great
accomplishment for Norbord’s Inverness site and all the staff who worked towards achieving the standard for this certification should be very proud of their efforts”.

In order to introduce further flexibility for its customers, Sandvik Hindrichs-Auffermann has merged parts of its administrative and sales operations in Ennepetal, Germany with those of its sister company, Sandvik Belts (Sandvik Process Systems) in Sweden.
As a result, managing director Stephen Gierke, and marketing and sales manager Dr Alfons Böhm, have taken up new
positions within the Sandvik group. Assuming overall responsibility for Sandvik Hindrichs-Auffermann is Kai Bockenheimer.

Carmanah Design and Manufacturing Inc, located in Vancouver BC, has received an order to supply equipment to the first OSB mill to be built in Russia.
The order will consist of two 28/81 SmartRing batch stranders, complete with batch
feeders designed to deliver 5.45m-long logs to the stranders.
The OSB project will be located in Russia at a site 1,000km east of Moscow and delivery of the machines is scheduled for early 2009.

Huber Engineered Woods (HEW) executives have met with Emanuel County, Georgia, officials to discuss plans for the OSB mill the company first announced plans to build more than three years ago.
Huber officials recently met with
representatives of the Chamber and with the Swainsboro/Emanuel County Joint Development Authorities.
HEW confirmed its selection of Emanuel County as the location for its new OSB facility in May 2006, after announcing in March 2005 it planned to build a mill in either South Carolina or Georgia.
The new plant was originally slated for start-up in 2008, with an annual production capacity of more than 650 million ft2/year once fully operational. It would also create up to 150 new jobs.
Following the Chamber of Commerce meeting, Andy Riley, president of the Joint Development Authorities, said in a statement: “Huber Engineered Woods Inc continues to be committed to plans to construct an Oriented Strand Board plant here in Emanuel County. With conditions in the housing market in a state of decline, the project continues to be delayed, which is understandable”.

Smith & Fong Co, San Francisco-based manufacturer of Plyboo bamboo architectural plywood and flooring, has announced that its bamboo plywood products have passed emissions testing under the criteria of California Section 01350, the most
stringent volatile organic compound (VOC)
emissions standards in North America.
Smith & Fong says its entire product line already meets the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB) Phase I and Phase II regulations for formaldehyde emissions, which were passed in 2007. The company says many of its products are 100% urea formaldehyde-free.
Smith & Fong was the first US company to manufacture bamboo flooring in China for sale in North America, offering its initial Plyboo product in 1993.

Michael Rehwinkel, vice chairman of the APA Board of Trustees, has assumed the chairmanship of the association. He
succeeds Jim Enright, who recently resigned from the position on his
departure from APA member company Standard Structures Inc.
Mr Rehwinkel is president-wood products at Georgia-Pacific Wood Products LLC, Atlanta, Georgia. He joined GP in 2000 and was appointed president of wood products in 2006.
Prior to that he worked for 23 years in various financial and general management capacities, primarily in the paper industry.

The Danzer Group has rejected Greenpeace’s latest attack on the company as a
“populist gimmick”.
The environmental group accused Danzer, the world’s largest manufacturer of hardwood veneers, of “massive tax fraud” by depriving the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo of millions of euros in taxes.
Greenpeace said the loss was approximately e8m – 50 times the annual budget of DRC’s environment ministry.
Danzer issued a statement rejecting the allegations as without foundation and said it paid taxes regularly, as well as investing e3m annually into social programmes in both countries.
 “For years Greenpeace has been attempting to tarnish the reputation of Danzer Group by floating rumours, making defamatory statements and spreading half-truths,” said Danzer.
“But constantly repeating false, concocted allegations does not make them true.”

Silvaris Corporation has expanded its online trading service OSBMarket (www.osbmarket.com) into Eastern Canada, Nova Scotia, and the North Eastern US.
Released a year ago to limited regions, OSBMarket has been gradually increasing its coverage across the US and Canada and is now available in French.
A recent contract with Louisiana-Pacific was instrumental in the ability to cover the new regions, said Silvaris ceo Kurt Bray, who said the company plans to continue to add regions until it covers the whole of the US and much of Canada.

The negative trend in Italian wood technology orders, already recorded in the first quarter of 2008, worsened in the second quarter.
After three years of growth, the usual quarterly survey from Acimall, the Italian woodworking machinery and tools manufacturers’ association, shows that, compared to the same period in 2007, orders from the Italian market decreased by 17% and 10.7% from abroad.
The total reduction is therefore equal to 12.5% on a year-to-year basis.

The Fantoni Group, producers of office furniture, sound-absorption and partition systems, particleboard and MDF panels, says it closed 2007 with remarkable financial results, with total turnover of e354.234m, an increase of 15% compared to the previous year.
The result, which was in line with the company’s forecasts, matches a significant increase in cash flow, which at e30.636m shows an increase of 17.45% compared with 2006. However, Fantoni says the most remarkable achievement is seen in the net profit which, at e4.979m, shows an increase of 134.64% compared with 2006.
This reflects the result of increased sales of particleboard and MDF on the domestic market and significant contributions from the Slovenian company Lesonit and the Serbian one Spik Inverica, said managing director Paolo Fantoni.
Mr Fantoni also praised the positive progress at subsidiary Patt, a company specialising in sound absorption panelling.

The latest developments in wood modification are to be discussed at a European conference in Stockholm.
Chemical, thermal, oleothermal, mechano-thermal and other technologies will be
covered at The Fourth European Conference on Wood Modification on April 27-29, 2009.
Sessions will also deal with gluing, coating and composites technology and testing methods and standards, as well as environmental issues.
EcoBuild, an Institute Excellence Center at SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden is hosting the conference in cooperation with KTH. www.ecwm4.com

Dieffenbacher GmbH & Co KG of Eppingen, Germany and The Teaford Company Inc of Alpharetta, Georgia, US have entered into a long-term agreement to market, sell and manufacture dryers, Swiss Combi systems and heat energy systems.
This exclusive agreement for North and Central America is said to combine the strengths of both
companies: Teaford as a leading turnkey supplier of biomass energy systems for the wood based and
agricultural industries and Dieffenbacher as a leading global supplier of complete production plants for the wood based panel industry.
This agreement is in line with Dieffenbacher’s declared strategy to service the North American market with products which are, as much as possible, manufactured in North America.
Teaford is now able to offer dryers according to the Dieffenbacher design concept and the Swiss Combi system, which is said to greatly reduce operating costs and emissions from wood dyers.

Ainsworth’s Pourform 107 concrete forming plywood panels have been used in the construction of Vancouver’s highest building.
The medium density overlay panels, made using Douglas fir veneers with the company’s distinctive orange edge sealer, were used for slab pouring at the 61-storey Shangri-La Hotel and residential complex.
The five-star hotel is expected to be fully booked when the city hosts the Winter Olympics in 2010.

The Structural Board Association (SBA), which for 32 years has represented OSB manufacturers around the world, has announced that TECO, the certification and testing agency, has finalised an agreement to acquire the assets of SBA.
It was first announced by SBA in April (WBPI Issue 3, 2008, p10) that TECO and SBA had signed a letter of intent and would formalise an agreement. TECO chairman and ceo Steve Winistorfer and SBA president and ceo Mark Angelini worked out the detail of purchase and signed the Memorandum of Agreement which became effective on August 15.
TECO and SBA, along with current SBA
members, have been cooperating to determine which SBA activities and services TECO will
continue in 2009.
“The relationship between the SBA and TECO goes way back,” said Chris Reid, SBA chairman and vice president of Langboard of Quitman GA. “They have cooperated in many ways for years and even had a joint SBA/TECO IAC meeting in 2003, so having TECO carry on what the SBA has been able to do makes perfect sense.”

Greenpeace has called on the UK construction industry to replace illegally sourced plywood with Forest Stewardship Council-certified OSB.
Tropical forests are “being destroyed to make way for throwaway products like plywood”, with many UK construction companies continuing to source timber from illegal and unsustainable sources, according to the latest salvo from the environmental action group’s forest campaigner Mariana Paoli.

Weyerhaeuser Company has reported a second-quarter loss of US$96m from a year
earlier profit of US$32m.
Revenue for the Federal Way, Washington-based company fell to US$3.61bn from US$4.33bn a year earlier.
Weyerhaeuser said “unprecedented conditions” in the housing market are reflected in the second-quarter results of its real estate, wood products and timberlands businesses.
In addition, high oil and energy prices hurt all its businesses. “We’re not satisfied with the results and are continuing to take restructuring action consistent with our more focused portfolio,” said the company.

Schattdecor is to build a brand new state-of-the-art printing line in the US.
The Thansau, Germany-headquartered decor printer announced the plans on August 20 at an evening reception for customers and press during the IWF exhibition in Atlanta.
The 100,000ft2 new facility is currently under construction in St Louis, Missouri and is expected to produce its first roll of decor paper in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Schattdecor ceo Reiner Schulz said the company has been in the US market since 1995, beginning by importing decors from Germany, and decided the time was right to support the market with its own printing line.

A new research strategy aims to support the creation of “potent new business activities” for the Finnish wood products industry.
The joint wood products cluster research strategy focuses on seven areas – new products and services, production technologies of the future, wood construction, studies that support standardisation, the environmental performance of wood, the possibilities of bioenergy and bio-based chemicals and business innovations and regeneration.
“It is important from the perspective of the entire wood products cluster that visible results are achieved quickly, even though we are also aiming to promote competitiveness over the long term,” said Finnish Forest Industries Federation president Anne Brunila.

The European Commission is to contribute 6.5m euros to a new collaborative project looking to develop sustainable wood based composite materials.
SustainComp will work on new products for a wide range of applications, combining wood, bioplastics and nanotechnology to produce “sustainable and lightweight materials”. It will have a total budget of e9.5m and involve 17 organisations from across Europe.
These ‘nanostructured wood based BioComposites’ will provide an environmentally sensitive alternative to traditional composite materials which use oil-based plastics, while also “fostering new concepts and materials in a broad and innovative perspective” with the wood based industries, says SustainComp.

Indonesia’s wood products, such as sheet materials, will no longer be subject to the current tax of between 3 and 6%, while tax on plywood and boards will be reduced by 3.5% from the current tax of between 7 and 10%, the EC said in a recent statement.
The decision was made after the EU member states adopted in July a new regulation proposed by the EC amending the preferential import tariff scheme to the EU called the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP).
“GSP is a vital tool for our pro-development EU trade policy. The continuation of GSP will ensure stability and predictability for beneficiaries and traders in the EU and developing countries,” said EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson.

After its successful battle with Basel/Access Industries a year ago to buy Huntsman Corporation, Hexion Specialty Chemicals, and its parent Apollo Management, are now trying to pull out of the deal. This has prompted Huntsman to accuse Apollo of deliberately misleading shareholders with an offer it never intended to honour.
Huntsman, said to be the world’s largest manufacturer of epoxy adhesive, has extended a merger agreement with Apollo/Hexion as it seeks a legal route by filing documents in Delaware to force Hexion to honour its US$6.54bn takeover deal.
Meanwhile, Hexion sued Huntsman in Delaware in June to terminate the deal, saying the combined company would be insolvent. Huntsman responded by suing New York-based Apollo and partners Leon Black and Joshua Harris in a Texas court, seeking more than US$3bn. Salt Lake City-based Huntsman runs its operations from The Woodlands, Texas.
“We continue to believe the combined companies are solvent,” said Huntsman’s ceo Peter Huntsman. “This is all just a smoke screen by Apollo to try to get out of this deal, and we are not going to let them do that.”
The combined company would be one of the world’s largest speciality-chemical makers, with annual sales exceeding US$14bn, 21,000 employees and 180 facilities, according to Apollo. Hexion is the major producer of adhesives used in plywood.

Germany’s Pfleiderer AG plans to invest e144m in a new fibreboard facility in northwest Russia, according to Russian media reports.
The company plans to build the plant in Podberezye, near the city of Veliky Novgorod, close to Pfleiderer’s particleboard operation, RIA Novosti reports.
The plant, which will have a capacity of 500,000m3, is slated to go on-stream in the third quarter of 2009 and will target the furniture and construction markets in and outside Russia.
The plans have come under attack by some locals, however, who have waged a protest, citing fears the new mill could endanger lives and damage the environment, according to a report in The St Petersburg Times.

India has launched an MDF anti-dumping investigation after the country’s fibreboard manufacturers accused New Zealand, China, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Thailand of massively dumping cheap MDF on their market, reports the New Zealand Press Association.
India says substantial quantities of MDF are coming into the country at significantly lower prices than the cost of production – and the sale price in their countries of origin. Petitioners include domestic makers Nuchem and Shiridi Industries.
According to Reuters, the situation has arisen as Indian plywood firms switch to manufacturing cheaper particleboard and fibreboard in expectation of rising demand for mass-produced furniture in India.
Market leader Greenply Industries Ltd is reportedly investing INR3.7bn (US$87.4m) in MDF and laminate plants and Century Plyboards (India) Ltd plans to set up two MDF mills as part of a two-year investment plan.

The QualScan II, a key technology developed by Earl McCarthy, McCarthy Products Co, for analysing fibres in the manufacture of MDF and hardboard and pulp and paper, has been sold to Pulmac of Montreal.
Mr McCarthy will assist in integrating the QualScan into Pulmac’s line-up of equipment in the area of fibre testing and other key sectors.

Italian panel saw manufacturer Giben, Italy, has made a dramatic entry to the Chinese market in 2008.
The company has supplied two saw lines to panel maker Yingang. One was shipped in august 2008 to Yingang’s mill in Sichuan province and the second is due to be shipped at the end of this year, to Hubei.
Giben has also sold a line to Senlan Wood, Sichuan and to Taishan Weihua for delivery this year; and to Xianglin for delivery in 2009.
l Giben won the Challengers Award at the IWF exhibition in Atlanta, US in August. The award, for innovation, was for the company’s Giben ZERO system in which the saw’s motor no longer travels with the saw but is located in the base of the machine. Giben also won the Challengers Award in 2000.

Andry Pribadi, president director of PT Sumatera Prima Fibreboard (SPF), and Siempelkamp have signed a contract for the Indonesian company to take delivery of a super-thin MDF line with a ContiRoll press of 23.8m length and 9ft width.
Equipment supply will be from the woodyard to finished board storage, encompassing the full range of Siempelkamp thin board technology.
Board thickness will be from 1.5mm to 12mm with a maximum output of 780m3/day.
The new line, scheduled for early 2010 start-up, will be adjacent to SPF’s existing plant in Palembang.

European laminate flooring producers are going ‘on the offensive’ to prove the sustainability of their products.
The European Producers of Laminate Flooring (EPLF) association has been involved in an EU project to develop rules and standards on assessing the sustainability of flooring.
The rules and standards, known as Product Category Rules (PCR), have been published on the website of the German Institute of Building and Environment at www.bau-umwelt.de.
PCRs contain the regulations for
creating an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), which describes the life cycle of a product, from manufacture through its use and to disposal.

North American structural wood panel (plywood and OSB) production is expected to total 31.66 billion ft2 (3⁄8in basis) this year, down 18% from 2007 and 26% from the record 43.1 billion ft2 produced in 2005, according to the annual forecast of APA-The Engineered Wood Association.
Production in 2009 may be even less, with output falling another 3% to 30.87 billion ft2, based on the expectation that US single-family and multi-family housing starts will total just 880,000, down from about 910,000 this year. 
Softwood plywood production is forecast to total 12.57 billion ft2 this year, down nearly 14% from 2007, while OSB output is expected to reach 19.1 billion ft2, a decline of 20%.
Production of both plywood and OSB next year is forecast to decline an
additional 2-3%.
APA also forecasts declines this year and next for engineered wood framing products, such as glulam timber, wood
I-joists and laminated veneer lumber (LVL); by 22, 30 and 27%, respectively.
Structural plywood and OSB offshore imports to Canada and the US are forecast this year to total 530 million ft2, down 37% from last year and 80% from 2005.
US and Canadian offshore exports of panels are expected this year to total 1.25 billion ft2, up just slightly from last year but an increase of 138% from 2005.
The longer-term forecast is for the US housing market to begin a recovery in 2010, with housing starts rising to 1.55 million in 2011 and 1.9 million two years later, APA said. That would help boost North American structural wood panel production to a record 45.4 billion ft2 in 2013.

One of the leading decor printers in the world is the Interprint Group. Its myriad of styles can be seen decorating the surfaces of numerous materials made from derived timber products, including living room, kitchen and bathroom furniture and laminate flooring. It can also be seen in the interior furnishing of trains, shops, aeroplanes and in the automotive industry.
Headquartered in Arnsberg, Germany, where the company was founded in 1969, Interprint has seven locations with its own production facilities, sales and service departments plus an additional sales and service office in Italy. The company is also represented on all continents by sales agencies and has in total some 830 employees.
Interprint is wholly owned by the Arnsberg family-managed company Wrede Industrieholding, which has more than 125 years experience in derived timber products. Interprint prints on a total of 23 production machines with an overall capacity of 109,000 tonnes.
The Arnsberg location has recently been awarded the “Highly Protected Risk” rating by the property insurer FM Global. The worldwide property and business-interruption insurer grants the HPR award only to those locations that, by means of concrete measures, have minimised the probability of occurrence, and the extent of potential damage, in the best possible form.
After Interprint USA, Interprint in Germany is the second location to have achieved the HPR status. Now, the remaining Interprint production facilities are to follow.
Gerhard Hochstein, chief technology officer at Interprint said: “At Interprint effective risk management is practiced every day. This includes organisational and technical measures which either already existed or have been worked out in close cooperation with the FM Global engineers”.
Since the beginning of 2006 the company has had an in-house engraving centre equipped with both a conventional system for electromechanical engraving and a direct laser system, making Interprint the first decorative paper printer with in-house laser engraving capabilities. Laser engraving allows precise printing and an even faster decor development, says Interprint.
Another development is in the area of mother-of-pearl and metal effects which have increasingly been used in furniture design. Because the process can sometimes present problems with production flow, Interprint sought to solve this by seeing what their research and development department could come up with.
The result is Pearl Perfect, which optimises resin flow behaviour during pressing. Typical blemishes like cloudy, spotty surfaces and pressing or condensation stripes are either minimised or avoided altogether with conventional production methods, says Interprint.
Printed decors aim to be exact reproductions of wood, stones and creative design which can hardly be distinguished from the original material. Decor paper and foils from Interprint are the central decorative element for surfaces such as derived timber products, for which there are unlimited design options.
Everyday, inhouse and external designers dedicate their creativity to new decor
developments which reach Interprint’s customers via the company’s international distribution network.
Elisabeth Zenker, Interprint’s international design director, says: “Communication does not have any national boundaries at Interprint – our thoughts and actions are international. We work with design professionals around the world. This creative pool is very rich in ideas and visions for new decors. We can choose the best designs from that variety and turn them into successful products for the customer”.
Hardly any other colour is as effective as white, says Interprint, which is why furniture design currently presents itself in this refreshing colour. The new Interprint collection shows how this colour trend can be transferred on to wood. From almost pure white to beige shades, to nuances of honey, the decors on fronts and surfaces tend to be rather light. Even striking woods such as core beech and hazelnut are giving off more lightness than before.
Classic oak is exceptionally versatile and is compatible with lots of different trends. Interprint’s Banstead Oak, for example, is rich in contrast without producing an
impression of restlessness. From light beige to honey-coloured, the new Interprint pattern unfolds a beautiful play of colours, says the company.
Another variant in the oak spectrum is Salina Oak with narrow flower shapes, slight reflection and a balanced plan effect.
White Wash Wood is a striped, brushed pinewood that has been given a chalk effect. On furniture surfaces, the decor is said to show clear pores and high colour quality.
Also following the trend towards light colours is the new maple pattern Samira Maple. Overall, it looks restrained due to the filigree grain and fine pores but the sophistication lies in the detail of cut-in flowers and the dark beginnings of branches.
Two-dimensional core parts that flow into classic beech structures characterise Rosemoor Beech. This combination produces an harmonious impression that is not too
strongly dominated by core parts.
The hazelnut decor Clifton Walnut is predestined for high quality modern furniture construction, with its natural brilliance of colour arising through an alternation of light and medium hazelnut shades.
A variety of stone elements come together in Botticino to form a structure that is reminiscent of the design of the 60s. The grains and stones embedded in a fine chalk are between two millimetres and five centimetres in size. Botticino is said to be particularly well suited to pepping-up worktops.
Coobers Cube is a name that reminds one of the opal city of Coober Pedy in Australia, but it is glass bricks, not precious stones from the outback, that give this Interprint decor its glamorous appearance. Refraction and changing colours produce an interesting mosaic-like structure. Coobers Cube gives a creative, new look at structures
and epitomises the ‘Go closer!’ aspect of the Interprint design philosophy, says the company.
‘Go closer! Discover a new dimension of design!’ was Interprint’s show motto at the ZOW 2008 furniture components trade fair exhibition held in Bad Salzuflen, Germany earlier this year. The wording of the motto extended across an entire wall. Facing this was an 18m-long row of black tables divided by high decor presentation drawers printed with photos. The photo motifs consisted of strongly coloured close-ups of abstract and concrete structures from daily life that inspire Interprint’s new decors which, consequently, could be pulled out of the drawers.
Visitors were impressed with the stand concept and the exciting new decors, said Interprint’s sales and marketing director, Holger Dzeia: “Our participation at ZOW was a great success. We were very satisfied with the response produced by our presentation concept and our new decors. Interprint concentrated on its design competence and it was that which attracted many visitors.”

It is my experience that people often use the term “physical property” when they are actually referring to a mechanical property.
A mechanical property of a material is any of its strength characteristics, such as compression and internal bond strength, or screw withdrawal, or bending stiffness, to name but a few.
In order to measure a mechanical property, one must deform the material – often to destruction – if an ultimate characteristic such as bending strength is required.
Physical properties on the other hand are those such as thermal conductivity, swelling, surface roughness, density and so on. These can be measured without deforming or changing the material.
What about swelling, which changes the dimensions of a product and sometimes irreparably? Well, it is the test that alters the product and not the measurement, which is a measure of thickness, or length, neither of which alter the product.
There is also an overlap with chemistry. For example a panel colour, which is a physical property, may be due to the species of wood used, the colour of which is largely determined by the quantity and type of extractives present, which is a chemical property.
Or the colour may vary from one shift to another because of different temperatures in the dryer or defibrator, among other reasons which may cause chemical changes in the wood.
I mention this topic because COST Action E49, a European network of researchers and professionals with an interest in wood based panels that I have the honour to chair, is organising a one-day conference dedicated to physical properties of panel products. We are expecting presentations on topics like: acoustic performance, dimensional stability, fire resistance, thermal conductivity/insulation, density, machinability, surface roughness, colour assessment, coatability and printability. These properties are vital for certain end-uses of panels, but are often side-lined in conferences.
There is also the possibility for manufacturers and researchers to demonstrate equipment they have developed to measure physical properties. The conference will be held in Istanbul on April 28/29, 2009 so you have plenty of time to submit a presentation or exhibit to the organisers. Information about the conference can be found at www.COSTE49.org.

I hope you will forgive me if I return to the theme of my comment in the last issue concerning the fact that our industry seems to be continually under attack on the environmental/emissions/wood supply front, but something was said at a conference I attended shortly after writing that piece which concerned me deeply.
One of the speakers at the TAPPI DIL symposium (p50), speaking in the context of saving paper, said: “...and this saves trees and that has got to be a good thing”.
That statement went unchallenged – unquestioned – even by an audience full of forest products specialists.
Why has “saving trees” got to be a good thing? Trees are the crop which we harvest to produce panels and decorative papers. They are replanted to produce more wood in order to produce more panels and decorative papers. The industry’s products lock up carbon and the young growing trees absorb CO2 and store it as carbon (which we are told is vital for the climate). So where is the problem in cutting down trees – as long as they are grown and harvested sustainably, of course. What needs to be stopped is the burning of that resource for energy production, thus releasing the carbon. Plant MORE trees, I say!
The most worrying aspect of that speaker’s statement is that it went unchallenged. Are even people who should know better coming to accept mis-informed ‘environmental’ propaganda as ‘fact’?
On a similar note, I can understand why Tom Julia, president of the CPA, said at the same symposium: “The CPA supports the CARB rule [on formaldehyde emissions] and its conditional
federalisation. There is no opportunity to roll this rule back...”
This has to be seen as a pragmatic approach, and a way for the whole industry to avoid getting a bad reputation, but I still believe the formaldehyde/cancer ‘hysteria’ is unfounded in scientific fact – ask the Formaldehyde Council (or see WBPI issue 6, 2007, p49).
What will be the next pressure the industry gives in to? What other accusations based on flawed science will it be persuaded to accept as ‘fact’, for which there will be further draconian legislation?
The CARB rule has serious ramifications. As Mr Julia pointed out, inspectors can ‘deconstruct’ your panel product, removing surface coverings for example, and thus test it in a form in which you did not sell it. You would still be liable for its failure – potentially with very serious consequences for your business. And that is
neither fair nor reasonable.
Beware the march of further ill-informed regulation – and thoughtless statements such as that one about “saving trees”.

The Austrian company known today as FunderMax owes its origins to two long-established companies, namely Funder and Isovolta.
Funder was a family business which started around 1900 with several small sawmills and in 1920 built its first panel mill, producing wet process hardboard.
In 1981, Funder Industry was taken over by Constantia AG.
Isovolta, meanwhile, was founded in 1949 and began producing decorative laminates in Werndorf near Graz, Austria, in 1954. In 1962, Isovolta built a factory in Neudorf.
Cooperation between the two companies began in 2001 with the foundation of a joint company, Funder-Max Handels GmbH.
In 2004, Österiechische Homogenholz GmbH in Neudörfl was integrated and the following year, 2005, Funder and Isomax AG were consolidated into FunderMax GmbH.
In 2007, FunderMax sold off the Rudolstad (Isowood) plant and the Spremberg (Sprela) factory.
Today, Constantia Industries AG has three main divisions: Technical Plastics; Wood Products; and Surfaces.
Isovolta AG comes under Technical Plastics, while FunderMax is under Wood Products. Impregnated papers were separated out and put under Impress Decor GmbH in 2007 and this company forms the Surfaces division.
Surfacing is an important market area for FunderMax, which claims to be “the leading specialist in central Europe for manufactured wood products and decorative laminates”. The company says it aims for niche markets at a high quality level.
The FunderMax product range includes Homogen raw particleboard, Star Favorit laminated particleboard and Biofaser fibreboard panels.
The company also offers exterior and interior compact laminates, high pressure laminate (HPL) and semi-finished
components.
In fact, compact laminates accounted for 29% of the company’s e295.47m turnover in 2007. Homogen accounted for 22%, Star Favorit for 25%, laminates 9%, Biofaser 11% and semi-finished components 2%.
Star Favorit comes in a variety of guises: ‘Standard’ melamine faced flat panels; ‘Real Metal’ single or double-sided
aluminium faced panels; Superfront particleboard panels laminated directly with a melamine resin layer of 0.5, 1.0, or 1.5mm for increased impact resistance; Display Board laminated with melamine on both faces in white, designed to be used with special board markers and dry-wiped clean; and Preformed, with a routed edge under the laminate, which is then moulded over it. A machining service for cut-to-size laminated panels is also offered.
FunderMax Exterior is compact laminate which is available in large format panels for construction purposes such as cladding facades and balconies. Exterior is also available with customer-specified decor designs, such as railway maps for example, and in lap-siding elements with backing profiles and mounting clips.
Another exterior product is FunderMaxExterior Alucompact 42F quality panels. These are duromer high-pressure laminates (HPL) as per EN 438-6 type EDF, with extremely effective weather protection, says the company. The weather protective coating consists of double-hardened acrylic polyurethane resins. They have a 0.42mm-thick aluminium strip underneath the decor layer on both sides. This gives the panels extremely high tensile strength and rigidity, says FunderMax, enabling the production of perforated balcony elements, or the spacing between the mounting points to be increased.
FunderMax panels from the Universal collection are suitable for interior and exterior applications and are large-format duromer high-pressure laminates (HPL) as per EN 438-6 type EGF.
Vehicle interiors are another specialist market, where FunderMax supplies organic fibre based varnished panels, its decorative laminates and its compact laminates.
FunderMax has four locations in Europe: FunderMax St Veit with three factories; FunderMax Wiener Neudorf; and FunderMax Neudörfl. The fourth plant is in France, at Lyon, and is known as Max Compact France.
FunderMax exports a lot of its production, with only 28% being consumed domestically. Germany accounts for 24%, France 6%, Italy 10% and the rest of the EU20%. Distribution partners in 29 countries help to spread the word as far afield as New Zealand and Taiwan.
So it would appear that FunderMax, while being a well-known producer of particleboard and fibreboard, has a very strong presence in the value-added sector with its products designed for interior and exterior decorative use.

Kronospan has decided it is time to emphasise what it says are its worldwide milestones of environmental achievement in wood based panel products.
The company says it has for some time adhered to norms and standards for its products and production processes and is already supplying the market with particleboard and MDF products of ‘E-LE’
(Low Emission) Standard.
This E-LE quality particleboard and MDF is a new product from Kronospan and the company says it far exceeds international legal standards, having a formaldehyde content of less than 4mg for particleboard and less than 5mg for MDF. The company says these technological advances are compliant with its customers’ requirements for environmental improvement.
The new products are certified by third party monitoring and are available on the market without any volume restriction,
says Kronospan.
The following are the milestones which Kronospan claims for its products over the last 23 years:-
1985 First particleboard in standard E-1
1988 First MDF tannin-bonded F-0
1989 First east European factory to produce E-1 particleboard
2007 First OSB Eco (formaldehyde-free)
2008 Kronospan sets new standards with
E-LE (Low Emission) for particleboard and MDF production.
This major panel producer claims it is also a world leader with regard to technical developments and that the advances it has made with respect to environmental issues are unrivalled.
PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes) and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification is an integral part of Kronospan’s philosophy and its compliance is strictly monitored.
This includes savings in virgin timber usage and recyclability of all product, using timber from verified well-managed forests and ensuring renewable and sustainable resources, says the company.
“Kronospan’s aim is to set new technical and environmental standards. Our aim is to maximise the yield from input materials to achieve cost-effective production with reduced environmental impact,” said a spokesman.

In order to facilitate the use of recycled wood as a raw material for its particleboard production, Gruppo Trombini has installed a ClassiCleaner screening and cleaning system from Dieffenbacher.
The system was started up at the Annovati production line in Frossasco in September 2007, making it the first ClassiCleaner installation in Italy.
In line with the industry’s trend to switch to the use of recycled raw materials, such as construction waste or old furniture, Finland-based Dieffenbacher Panelboard Oy has developed a solution which combines screening and cleaning into one single unit.
Dieffenbacher claims that the ClassiCleaner eliminates over 90% of all impurities, enabling high quality end product from low quality raw material.
The Annovati plant uses 100% urban waste to produce raw and melamine-faced particleboard. However, the mineral content in the raw material is very high, making it essential to have an efficient cleaning system at an early process stage.
“The ClassiCleaner has a totally different cleaning philosophy to any other system on the market,” said Mr Sirio Menghini, plant director of the Annovati site.
The operating principle is based on fractionating: the material is first separated into different fractions, which are then enriched and finally cleaned. This method combines air cleaning with roller screening.
By classifying the material into fine, medium and coarse, the most suitable cleaning method can be used for each type of fraction, according to Dieffenbacher. This is said to save a great deal of energy since there is no need to pass the entire material flow through the cleaning process. In fact, the material flow introduced to the air-cleaning phase is only around 10% of the total capacity.
The modular design of the ClassiCleaner is designed to enable quick installation and start-up; at the Annovati plant, the project was successfully carried out in less than three weeks, including dismantling old screening machinery.
“The compact system is low-maintenance and simple to operate. Also, due to the efficient mineral separation, the exchange interval for screen nets in our hammer mills is three times longer than before. This not only has a positive
influence on maintenance costs, but it also improves the flake quality,” said Mr Menghini.
The plant director said he is very satisfied with the performance of the ClassiCleaner cleaning system, which is designed for processing 300m3/hour.
It features a ClassiScreen roller screen with three-stage cleaning, including separating units for sand, stones and heavy particles.
The raw material is introduced onto a bed of patterned rollers where impurities are enriched to smaller contaminated sub-flows. Each of these is taken to a suitable cleaning process.
Fine and heavy impurities, such as sand, pass to air-cleaning units, while large and heavy impurities are passed to a heavy particle separator. An additional cleaning unit is installed in the system to separate foils from the material flow.
Mr Menghini said the ClassiCleaner offers the optimum combination: low energy consumption and high chip
cleaning efficiency.
“The complete ClassiCleaner installation consumes about 300kW less electrical energy than our old cleaning system. For us, this means annual savings of nearly e200,000 in energy consumption.”

The 4th International Conference on Advanced Engineered Wood & Hybrid Composites drew attendees from throughout the world to Bar Harbor, Maine, in mid-summer.
The session, sponsored by the University of Maine Advanced Engineered Wood Composite Center, Orono, Maine, presented and discussed commercial, scientific and engineering aspects of advanced engineered wood and hybrid composites.
Zhiyong Cai, PhD, PE, materials research engineer of the US Forest Service’s Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, Wisconsin, reported on bamboo as a natural fibrous grass capable of growing in near-timber volumes and sizes.
He said it has a commercially viable global distribution from tropical to sub-frigid zones. Bamboo can be manufactured into numerous types of top-grade construction materials to meet different performances by introducing a combination of advanced restructuring technologies.
Recently, parallel bamboo strip composites (panel and beam), using phenol formaldehyde (PF) resin impregnation technology, have been investigated at the Forest Products Laboratory. The new bamboo composites show excellent mechanical properties. The modulus of elasticity of a parallel bamboo strip beam can be as high as 35GPa (5.1x106 psi), which is two- to five-times higher than most existing wood composites.
In hurricane wind testing of a parallel bamboo strip panel, a 15-pound southern pine 2x4in, driven at about 110miles/hour, failed to penetrate the 0.9in bamboo panel. The high modulus of elasticity and impact resistance of the new bamboo composites demonstrates high potential for value-added construction material.
Dr T Sean Connolly, Plum Creek Timber Co, Columbia Falls, Montana, commented that North American MDF and particleboard traditionally have used urea formaldehyde resin. Ultra low formaldehyde emission regulations and ‘green building programs’ that specify non-added-urea formaldehyde products have placed increased pressure on the industry to
develop alternative resin systems.
Plum Creek MDF, in partnership with Hexion Specialty Chemicals, has worked on developing new resin systems for MDF. Laboratory trials and mill production trials have been performed to compare panel properties and mill productivity for the following resin systems: melamine urea formaldehyde (MUF), phenol formaldehyde (PF) and polymeric methylenebis (phenylisocyanate) pMDI.
Jan Luedtke, University of Hamburg Department of Wood Science Mechanical Wood Technology, reported on a continuous production process for lightweight panels.
He said modifying process parameters, or applying adjusted gluing systems, could reduce weights. Sandwich structures are an effective way to reduce weight while maintaining mechanical properties.
Sandwich panels are typically produced in batch processes in which the layers are glued together, or by continuous processes in which a foam core is injected between facings.
As both methods lack the possibility for a simultaneous production of all layers, a novel one-stage process for an integrated continuous production of wood based facings with a foam core has been developed.
A three-layer mat, of glued wood particles and expandable thermo-active core material, is formed and then hot pressed. The formation of the surface layers takes place directly, before the expansion of the core layer. The surface layers are compacted and cured in the initial pressing stage. The core is inactive until the temperature in the middle layer exceeds a certain level. On reaching this temperature the expandable material starts to react and increases its volume. The press is then opened to the final board thickness to allow the core to expand.
Since the process is similar to the well-established wood based panel production processes, only slight modifications to the equipment are needed.
Robert Noble, Noble Environmental Technologies, La Jolla, California, reported on eCor, being developed as an engineered structural panel using agricultural land recycled paper fibres. He said the product, with its high strength-to-weight properties, can compete with traditional wood based composites such as particleboard or fibreboard.
Boards can be made with or without adhesives, or any chemicals added, for many applications.
John B Busel, American Composite Manufacturers Association, said the industry has revenues of US$16.1bn per year with 125,000 employees.
He said market factors will influence the stability and growth of the North American composites market. The state of today’s residential housing market impacts composites, but this segment may hold the key to new opportunities.
He added that regulatory issues will not go away. The industry must position itself to react to situations, as they appear. “Innovation will be the key,” he said.
James M Westcott, Heartland Resources Technologies, Waunakee, Wisconsin, described soy-PAE resin originally developed by Kaichang Li at Oregon State University and first commercialised by Columbia Forest Products. Hercules Inc holds worldwide patents.
Dr Westcott said soy flour contains about 50% protein. The balance is mainly carbohydrate with some water, ash and fat. Soy protein concentrate has about 70% protein. Most of the soluble carbohydrate is removed, but it still contains insoluble carbohydrate.
On the marketing side, Thomas Williamson, APA - The Engineered Wood Association, Tacoma, Washington, said wood-framed houses made up more than 90% of US housing starts. He said it is imperative to protect and expand wood-framed residential markets.
He advised that the raised wood floor market should be expanded and traditional wood framing maintained by educating builders, designers and code officials.
Mr Williamson said the use of wood in non-residential construction represents the largest US wood market growth opportunity. His conclusions were:
• Residential markets are being challenged by steel and
concrete.
• Gulf coast effort (rebuilding after hurricanes) can spread to all concrete slab on grade markets, including the entire south and southwest.
• Use of wood in non-residential construction represents the largest US wood market opportunity.
• Advances in FRP reinforced wood products will expand opportunities for both residential and non-residential
construction.

A pulp and paper industry association may seem to have little to do with the panel industry, but the Decorative and Industrial Laminates (DIL) Committee works hard to put together a very relevant conference every two years.
This year was no exception, with a programme covering: Introduction; Specifications; Savings/Productivity; Innovation; Green/environmental; Green/product rating; and Economic and market directions, in the seven main sessions. An eighth session of workshops discussed laminate flooring and marketing.
Michel Fortin, chairman of the DIL committee for 2006-8, introduced the symposium – and the first speaker, Dr Constantine LaPassa of North Carolina State University.
Opening Session 2, Dr LaPassa described the new, 2008, NALFA Laminate Flooring Standard. Test protocols have been amended to give explicit treatment of underlayment; improve reproducibility; and better reflect in-service conditions. A new test for surface bond strength has also been added.
The speaker concluded that performance values now better reflect the end-use of the products.
Sylvie Gauthier, technical writer, then gave an overview of decorative overlay standards for foils, light basis-weight papers, films and thermally-fused papers.
She said that the Laminated Materials Association (LMA) has produced a separate standard for each type of overlay, with a description of the attributes of each. It also sets minimum requirements or expected values for surface properties and prescribes test methods from NEMA LD3 (2005), ASTM and ‘industry-accepted methods’. In a throwback to earlier times, NEMA stands for National Electrical Manufacturers’ Association.
The CPA (Composite Panel Association), now merged with the LMA, is soon to publish a compendium of the various standards, said Ms Gauthier.
Daniel C Nelson of DCN Technology looked at the US and international standards for high pressure decorative laminate (HPDL).
Like the previous speaker, he referred to NEMA LD3 and said the standard can seen at www.nema.org/stds/ld3.cfm.
Mr Nelson also listed the major parts of the European standard for HPL – EN438, 2005 – saying that it was similar in content to the NEMA standard but goes further because it includes compact laminates and specifications for flooring applications.
“We need one harmonised standard that really works. We’ve been trying, but it is a long and hard road and won’t happen any time soon,” said the speaker.
Structured troubleshooting: A roadmap for an analysis of laminate performance was the title of Berthold Dombo’s (DSM Melamine Americas Inc) presentation, which opened Session 3.
He said that 39% of melamine consumption worldwide is accounted for by LPL (low pressure laminate) production and 8% by HPL.
Mr Dombo presented his company’s structured approach to solving performance problems in laminates, defining the problems and describing the range of analytical techniques used.
Going in a completely different direction, Jim Scott of Mead Westvaco Corporation presented a paper on the biological treatment of speciality paper mill effluent.
He said that while primary treatment can remove particulate/fibrous material, in order to meet National Pollution Discharge Elimination System rules his company had to develop a biological secondary system. This ultimately returned water to the river from whence it came cleaner than when it was extracted, said Mr Scott.
Ending the morning session of day one of the two-and-a-half day symposium, respected industry veteran Holbrook F Platts gave a resume of the history of decorative high pressure laminates.
The Hall of Fame Luncheon followed (see box text).
Session 4 on ‘Innovation’ was opened by Ron Rodeck of AET Films with a talk on Oriented Polypropylene Films (OPP).
Acknowledging the contribution and development of paper- and vinyl-based overlays, Mr Rodeck said that paper inherently has poor water resistance and vinyl “is under severe environmental pressure”.
Describing OPPs as “the new decorative laminate option”, the speaker admitted that the simplest, calendered polypropylene (PP) films had poor adhesion characteristics and print quality, with high coverage costs.
“The properties can be enhanced by extruding and orienting the PP to produce thin and strong films, but there are still poor adhesion and robustness issues,” said Mr Rodeck, claiming the answer is AET’s new biaxially-oriented enhanced OPP, or E-OPP.
Among advantages he claimed for E-OPP was that it is greener, does not absorb ink like paper does, has superior print fidelity and can act as a ‘living hinge’ between panels, which will not fatigue, tear or split.
The next speaker was Sven Kramer of Bürkle North America Inc. He described the company’s system for digital printing directly onto wood based panels as presented at the Ligna exhibition in Germany in 2007. Mr Kramer claimed the following as some of the advantages for his company’s technology: unlimited design flexibility, almost immediate design change within a production run, a photo-realistic image and reduction of production costs for small batch runs.
Lightweight panels for furniture manufacture have been raising increasing interest in recent years and another Bürkle man, Brent Warren, presented the company’s complete production line for fully-framed or frameless honeycomb panels.
Jonathan Shaw of Cytec Industries Inc looked at Technological trends in panel finishing, covering radiation curing and powder coating.
He said that what he called “energy curing” could be by means of ultra-violet (UV) radiation, visible light, or high-energy electrons. The coatings are cured, not dried as in conventional water- or solvent-based systems, he explained, saying that this had the advantage of endless pot-life for the coating material.
“Why use energy curing?” asked Mr Warren, rhetorically. “Because it is very fast – seconds versus hours for conventional drying – and the cost per cured part is less than for solvent- or water-borne finishes. The equipment also has a small footprint and uses less energy.”
He said that such coatings could be used on paper which is to be laminated to MDF or particleboard to give increased chemical, scratch and abrasion resistance.
The speaker went on to describe powder coating as another ‘green’ technology, employing no liquids or solvents, and said that UV powder coatings can save time and energy.
The second day of the symposium, and the opening of session 5 on green and environmental issues, was opened by Ray Barbee of major North American panel maker Roseburg Forest Products. His subject was ‘being green in the wood business’.
“We are one of the few companies which believes that owning timberlands is a good thing and we have over 750,000 acres,” he said.
Roseburg’s products include: softwood plywood; lumber; composite panels; speciality panels, such as hardwood plywood, MDO (medium density overlay) panels, marine plywood and melamine-faced panels; engineered wood products; and “Green Building Products”.
“What’s green about us?” asked Mr Barbee. “Nothing new. We maintain our timberlands for timber and wildlife, we plant five million seedlings a year and we have used cogeneration for a long time and we make composite and plywood panels with no added urea formaldehyde.”
Roseburg also has a wide array of environmental certification, with its Californian timberlands FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified.
Roseburg plans to use methane gas from Montana land-fills to run its Missoula particleboard mill’s dryers.
Mr Barbee forecast that most of today’s green initiatives will be ‘business as normal’ in the future, that UF resin will no longer be used in any panel type and that cogeneration/biomass plants will continue to shorten fibre supply.
Next up, Beth Studley of Holder Construction Co and chair of the US Green Building Council, Atlanta Chapter, explained sustainable design and LEED certification. This stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and certification is obtained via a system of credits earned for the use of recycled materials, FSC timber and so on.
Steelcase claims to be the largest office furniture manufacturer in the world and Mary Ellen Mika gave a presentation on what makes for ‘green’ office furniture and how to comply with the extremely stringent ‘McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry’s Cradle to Cradle’ certification. This examines every single component of a piece of furniture, whether it is actually exposed or not.
Laminates can contain undesirable chemical components and Ms Mika suggested that, for their part, laminate providers should use 100% recycled content/renewable FSC-certified underlayment, using no added-formaldehyde resins, and that laminate should be attached using no adhesive, or adhesives that are Greenguard/FES (Furniture Emission Standard) certified with no VOCs or halogenated solvents.
Session 6 was again on green issues, with regard to product rating, and John Bradfield, the CPA’s director of environmental affairs, was on hand to explain CARB (California Air Resources Board) certification as it applies to the Composite Wood Air Toxic Control Measure or ATCM. This requires third-party certification of all hardwood plywood, particleboard and MDF panels sold in California or utilised in finished products sold there. January 2009 will present the first of many deadlines with which manufacturers will have to comply.
Still on the subject of the CARB regulations, Mike Zimmerman of Sauder Woodworking Company, a furniture manufacturer, described how such a company must be able to trace all supplies for compliance – and label its products correctly. He also touched on the implications for imported furniture. “Imported products are a huge problem,” he said. “They make the domestic situation look easy!”
As nobody wants two different stocks of finished product, be it panels or furniture – one for California and one for everywhere else – this is effectively national legislation, said the speaker.
Formaldehyde seems to be a word that is never far from anybody’s lips in the industry today and Betsy Natz of the Formaldehyde Council (a non-profit Washington DC-based trade association) was there to defend it.
“This is one of the most extensively studied chemicals in commerce and it would be almost unimaginable if we were to try to take it out of commerce completely,” she said.
Tom Julia, president of the CPA, was the keynote speaker during lunch on this second day.
He reported that 95% of the particleboard, MDF and hardboard producers in North America (including Mexico) are members of his association.
The Decorative Surfaces Council is a stand-alone committee within the CPA and Mr Julia said the association’s “tag-line” for this year is Advancing the wood based panel and decorative surfacing industries.
He said the association was more proactive and has a more ‘green’ market focus. He added that the CPA has also opened its International Testing and Certification Centre (ITCC).
Perhaps surprisingly to some, with regard to the CARB rule Mr Julia declared: “The CPA supports the CARB rule and its conditional federalisation. There is no opportunity to roll this rule back. Our approach is to build a consensus and work towards a rule that will work”.
He did, however, express concerns about the proposed deconstructive testing of panels or furniture, such as removing the surface covering of the panels:  “they would not be testing the product you sold, as it was sold,” Mr Julia pointed out.
“We cannot afford to be passive or defensive when it comes to environmental matters Those who watch the world as it passes by are left behind to ponder their irrelevance,” he concluded.
Session 7, Economic and market directions, was opened by Eric R Bober of Pöyry Forest Industry Consulting.
He said that LPM growth is decelerating, while Europe is the biggest market and drives global demand, and that Russia and Turkey are currently driving European demand.
In HPL/CPL (continuous pressure laminate) demand has stagnated in North America and Europe, while Asia is stable with regional differences. Western European companies are increasingly going down the continuous pressing route.
Mr Bober went on to say that surfacing remains a challenging business, but recovery is expected but he forecast that market growth for LPM and laminates will remain slow.
He said people and innovation/differentiation remain important to competitiveness in a down-cycle, and in the supply chain he forecast integration and clustering, acquisitions, partnerships or joint ventures and operational improvements such as network optimisation.
“European players have succeeded in creating value from both vertical and horizontal integration,” he said.
Darrell Keeling works for Roseburg Forest Products, but his presentation was on behalf of the CPA as its chairman for 2008 and concerned the panel market outlook.
Mr Keeling cited production pressures as being rising resin costs and falling fibre supply with increasing competition for that raw material, including from biofuels as well as pellet production.
But it was not all doom and gloom. The speaker forecast:  “the decade ahead holds great promise, with a housing recovery and a stronger industry with products configured to match green markets.
“We must get the formaldehyde issues behind us,” concluded Mr Keeling.
Jim Gould of the Floor Covering Institute outlined the rapid development of laminate flooring in the last 15 years.
He suggested that in order to hit the commercial flooring market, a way needs to be found around the problem of expansion gaps.
Michael Huth of Mead Westvaco Corporation looked at the marketplace perception of laminates and cautioned against the perception of “cheap plastic laminates – that is only if we can’t tell the story.” Mr Huth suggested that a higher price equals a higher perceived value to the consumer.
Launching session 8A, the laminate flooring workshop, Andrzej Denisiewicz of Technocell Dekor described the backing paper manufacturing technology for laminate flooring, pointing out that it plays a crucial role in keeping the panels flat, which is sometimes not fully understood.
Next came Dirk Koltze of machinery maker Siempelkamp, who described the advantages of that company’s multi-piston press for short-cycle pressing, with better pressure distribution in width and length.
Jean Briere of Shaw Industries Inc presented his paper on impregnation of paper for laminate flooring. He said the important process elements were: paper formation, expansion, saturability and surface properties. Also important are raw resins and their formulation, as well as plasticizers because melamine is so brittle.
This article can only be a brief overview of a conference that was packed with information on a wide range of subjects which will have been of interest to panel makers/processors and those involved in the overlay producing sector. If you would like further information, please visit www.tappi.org and click on Decorative/Industrial Laminates.

I think it is fair to say that expectations of the 1,324 exhibitors were not high as they set up their booths at this year’s IWF exhibition. One would have to have been living in a cave on a remote island somewhere not to have realised that the US economy is in trouble and that the housing market there is particularly dire. The consequences of that for the panel manufacturing/processing industry do not, of course, need explaining.
It was thus no surprise to anybody that the first day of the show, and particularly the morning of that day, found relatively few visitors walking the massive
exhibition halls of the Georgia World Congress Centre.
It did not get a lot better during the next three days either, although the show’s organisers say that “buyers came from 80 countries”.
However, as we have said many times, it is quality not quantity that counts and most exhibitors seemed of the opinion that the quality of visitors to their booths was good. Some in fact reported being very busy on all days of the show. Productively busy, not just chatting.
Many of North America’s panel manufacturers exhibited at this major national show and just about all of them concentrated on environmental issues. The word ‘green’ was everywhere. This is not surprising given the imminent arrival of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) regulations on formaldehyde emissions from their products. But it was more than just formaldehyde. All were anxious to promote their environmental credentials in terms of wood supply as well, with FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes) being very commonly-found acronyms.
Temple Inland of Texas offered its recently-launched UltraStock-Free MDF with no added formaldehyde. Ultra-Stock includes ‘Select’ panels for maximum machinability, ‘Premium’ for maximum productivity and ‘Lite’, a panel up to 15% lighter than the company’s conventional MDF.
Temple Inland’s Temstock particleboard range has also added Temstock Free to its range of Temstock-S (for strength), -B for maximum productivity and -W for lighter weight.
Moisture resistant (MR) particleboard and MDF are also available.
Norbord was also offering MR grade and ultra-light MDF and featured FreshPly hardwood plywood with no added F-word (formaldehyde of course).
Plum Creek proclaimed that “Green has never looked so good” and offered GlacierGreen MDF/HDF and GlacierClear ‘Green-Building’ compliant MDF/HDF. These employ EcoBind™ Resin Technologies to achieve “ultra-low emission levels”.
Roseburg Forest Products also shouted the ‘green’ message loud and clear with its Green Products Guide booklet listing its Hybrid Green panels in MDF, particleboard, veneer core and plywood. It also boasted FSC chain-of-custody certification and offered a wide range of melamine decorative surfaces.
SierraPine was also offering no-added-formaldehyde MDF and particleboard and FSC-certified panels.
Uniboard’s Nu Green is EPP (Environmentally Preferred Product) certified and made from 100% post-industrial wood fibre, as well as having no added formaldehyde. Think green. Change the market was the slogan.
On August 1, Uniboard acquired a facility in Moncure, North Carolina, and plans to install a new MDF mill there in the coming year with a 10ft wide continuous press.
Arauco of Chile has a sales office in Atlanta through which it sells lumber, panel products, pulp and millwork. AraucoPly radiata pine plywood is available in several speciality grades and Trupan Ultralight MDF is also imported, together with the company’s wet process hardboard which has seen something of a market renaissance. It has the Certfor Chilean government seal of approval and PEFC certification.
This is just a sample of the many panel manufacturers exhibiting at IWF 2008.
Turning to the machinery/service suppliers, press plate maker Kings Mountain International’s Gary O’Neal said the company had enjoyed a very busy show with five out 10 visitors to the stand being involved in laminate flooring. These customers were mostly looking for differentiation to boost their sales in 2009.
“We are excited about where we are in the marketplace as the only totally integrated press plate manufacturer in the western hemisphere and one of only five worldwide,” said Mr O’Neal.
Flamex Inc’s Ole Sorensen said that his company was extremely busy, particularly following a major explosion at a sugar factory in the US in February, which raised awareness of the danger of dust explosions everywhere. Flamex’s spark detection and extinguishing systems are thus finding outlets in a range of industries as well as panels.
EWS North America was promoting its new weight-per-unit-area gauge Conti-Scale to be installed after the press as a non-contact traversing system, among its other on-the-line quality control and safety systems.
Andy Clarke of Clarke’s International Inc said his company was currently very busy and that business was very good, especially on the western side of the US. The company was particularly promoting its spark detection/extinguishing system PyroGuard, along with its high-speed abort gates and back-flow dampers.
Western Pneumatics Inc’s owner Bruce Livesay said the company was increasing its international business and had sold three of its Primary Oscillating Pulse Filters to Russia. This is a patented system to remove dust from exhaust streams.
Pentec International Inc of Marrietta, Georgia, is working together with Modul Systeme of Germany in the supply of secondhand reconditioned machinery, specialising in panels, and both companies exhibited, on adjacent booths.
Bruks Rockwood Inc was a new name at the show. The Bruks bit is familiar enough as a supplier of chipping and screening equipment to the panel and biomass industries.
It acquired Rockwood Materials Handling earlier this year, which specialises in tilting truck dumpers and ship loaders.
Arclin of Moncure, North Carolina was a new name at the show, though the original company would be familiar to most. Formed from Dynea North America Inc in a buyout headed by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan in July 2007, Arclin has plants in the US, Canada and Mexico producing overlays and resins and has developed a range of ‘green’ products.
Fezer came from Brazil to promote its equipment for the veneer and plywood industries. The company is inevitably finding the North American market slow currently, but is doing well in Russia and other eastern European countries.
Press plate maker Sesa of Italy was promoting its “ability to design textures to enhance decors, working with customers to design value-added features for decorative laminates”.
Imeas Inc, also headquartered in Italy, opened a new office in June last year in Peachtree City, Georgia.
“Our metal grinding business is excellent in the US, although the panel business here is currently dead,” said Imeas Inc president Nathan Rutherford.
Imal and Pal, again from Italy, shared a booth adjacent to Siempelkamp. Imal’s Stefano Benedetti said the firm’s mechanical blending system for MDF was attracting a lot of interest. The pallet blocks/stringers manufacturing line offered by Imal is also increasingly popular in the US, he said.
Alessandro Marcolin of Pal said the company has a big recycled wood cleaning operation at SierraPine in California and he saw a big future for recycling in the US.
Siempelkamp reported good progress in sales since it took over Metso’s energy system business and was also promoting its Generation 8 ContiRoll continuous press.
GreCon Inc’s Bob Barnum was exhibiting the German-headquartered company’s range of measuring and spark detection equipment, with the former chiefly going to the panel market.
Since January this year, Hueck press plates has been joined with Rheinische press pads. Hueck showed a number of bold new design ideas for its engraved/embossed plates.
Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery (SWPM) is a familiar company at all international exhibitions these days, although it has yet to break into the North American market.
Vits of Germany, famous for its paper impregnation lines, reported that is to launch a powder coating line for powder lacquering of wood based panels.
Dieffenbacher of Germany was able to announce its long-term agreement with the Teaford Company Inc of Alpharetta, Georgia to market, sell and manufacture dryers, Swiss Combi systems and heat energy systems for North and Central America.
Sandvik Hindrichs-Auffermann was displaying a range of press plate textures including woodgrains, leather and ‘hand-scraped’ wood. Regional sales manager Daniela Haarhaus said fabric designs are popular in the US at present.
Italian saw maker Giben won the Challengers Award at IWF for the second time, having won it in 2000 as well.
This year the company won the award for the Giben ZERO system. Lorenzo Galletti, projects director, explained that the basis of the system is that the saw motors do not move with the saw but are located in the base of the machine with toothed belt drives to the saws. This is claimed to dramatically reduce vibration and enable the use of a thinner saw blade. Giben was also promoting its Super Thin Loading Device for very thin panels.
B Maier had interest shown in its two-stage OSB flaking process and its wood-plastic composites system.
Sia Abrasives imports abrasive belts from its Swiss factory and converts them in its facility in Charlotte North Carolina. It launched its Top Tec dust-free belt in North America last year.
Metso may have sold part of its operations to Siempelkamp and Dieffenbacher, but that has left the company free to concentrate on its latest EVO refiners and its debarkers, screens, silos and chip washing. It also of course supplies refiner segments and offers a complete service and maintenance operation worldwide.
There were a number of exhibitors notable by their absence at IWF this year, perhaps reflecting the economic hard times in the US, or the fact that with so many exhibitions globally these days, hard decisions have to be made. The increasingly highly-regarded Lesdrevmarsh fair in Moscow two weeks after IWF may have been a contributing factor too.  n

Brazil, Latin America’s biggest country, and its most prized marketplace, remains the jewel in the crown for the region’s expanding wood based panel makers.
That is one reason why the country has seen a flurry of capacity expansion announcements from its domestic producers, scrambling to take advantage of sustained annual market growth expected to average more than 10% in the next four years.
Nowhere is the urge to establish market dominance in Brazil more vital than at Latin America’s top panel manufacturer Masisa SA.
The Chilean group, already a local MDF producer, is racing to launch a 750,000m3/year medium density particleboard (MDP) plant in Brazil’s southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul.
But Masisa’s Brazilian ambitions took a knock in July, when its bid to merge its local operations with those of Sonae Group offshoot Tafisa Brasil SA collapsed.
Masisa had acquired the 37% stake in Tafisa’s Piên MDF, MDP and laminated wood flooring plant from Tafisa’s ex-partner, Brascan Brasil. However, when merger talks broke down, Masisa sold out to Sonae, giving the Portuguese group 100% control of Tafisa Brasil.
Before the deal collapsed, Masisa revealed the main reason for the merger attempt was its need for greater local MDF and MDP production to offer its Brazilian customers, according to its corporate supply and development manager Eduardo Vial, who WBPI met in Chile.
Despite the setback, construction of Masisa’s southern MDP mill on a greenfield site in Montenegro, Rio Grande do Sul, has continued apace. The line is planned to start up in the first half of 2009.
Masisa has adopted a novel approach to the choice of its latest panel line. Instead of simply buying a brand new machinery package from one of the big European suppliers, the group is building a line based on a secondhand Dieffenbacher press acquired from a redundant strawboard plant formerly operating on the plains of Canada’s wheat belt.
The former 500,000m3/year Isobord Enterprises Inc strawboard line in Elie, Manitoba, launched in 1998, was acquired in 2001 by Dow BioProducts, part of Dow Chemical Canada, when Isobord went into receivership.
Dow, which supplied Isobord with polyurethane resin, ran the line until 2006. Attempts to find a buyer for the plant failed and finally, early this year, Dow sold the line machinery to Masisa.
Dieffenbacher overhauled and upgraded the 45x3m press in Canada and by July it was being shipped by rail to Houston, Texas for the final stage of its journey to Brazil. The converted line will include a new Dieffenbacher forming section and dryer, new glue kitchen and blending unit and an Imeas sander.
“In effect, it’s a completely new line with the upgrades,” explained Masisa’s corporate engineering manager Manfred Timmermann. The US$125m project will also include a 300,000m3/year Hymmen melamine line for finishing the board, he added.
The Montenegro plant will use a mix of plantation woods including pine, eucalyptus and short-fibre acacia, drawn mainly from local third party landowners. Masisa has also bought land and is planting around 4,000ha.
The plant benefits from a variety of communications options, including rail – to bring wood greater distances – as well as road and river.
“We need MDP to complement our product mix [in Brazil]. In a lot of [our] ‘Placacentro’ distribution centres, customers buy MDF from us and go to somebody else to buy MDP. We must complete our product range,” Eduardo Vial told WBPI.
Elsewhere in Brazil, Masisa is focusing all panel production on its core market of furniture and interior decorative uses. To that end, this year the group gave up its battle to create new markets for its single OSB plant in Ponta Grossa, Brazil and vowed to get out of the structural panel business.
It sold a 75% stake in its 350,000m3/year Dieffenbacher line to the region’s growing OSB manufacturer, Louisiana-Pacific Corporation of the US, which operates two smaller Chilean OSB plants through subsidiary LP Chile.
“Louisiana-Pacific is a very good partner for us. We don’t compete in any markets. They don’t make MDF or particleboard, and if we need the complement of structural board in some markets, they can provide this from Chile and Brazil now,” commented Eduardo Vial.
Although Brazil remains at the top of the group’s priority list for regional expansion, Masisa continues investing in other countries. Its strategy calls for a rolling programme under which it aims to install a new panel plant somewhere in Latin America every two to three years, it confirmed.
Chile is the hub of the Santiago-based group and, largely because of its small domestic market, is an exporting centre mainly serving Japan, China and South Korea, as well as parts of Latin America. Chile’s total MDF consumption remains modest, at just 110,000m3/year, while the national industry capacity is a huge 1.3 million m3/year.
MDF exports are set to rise with the 2007 start-up of a second continuous line, adding 350,000m3/year capacity to Masisa’s Cabrero site. As output from the Siempelkamp line grows, the group aims to target regional markets in Central America, the Caribbean and other parts of Latin America.
Cabrero’s line II, to run full out by the end of 2008, was originally conceived with a view to feeding the then-attractive US MDF mouldings market. But that has been squeezed following the sub-prime housing crisis. “We have forest and sawmills close by and when you put in a second line you reduce the fixed costs,” said Masisa’s manager of Chilean panel operations Luciano Tiburzi.
The line, utilising radiata pine, was designed to have a 2.75m wide press, with the Brazilian market in mind. Other countries in the region have a 2.45m width, Masisa explained.
Sections of the new line seem to dwarf Cabrero’s nearby 160,000m3/year line I, a Sunds Defibrator (Metso) unit with a Pendistor forming section and a 21x2.45m continuous Küsters press. Masisa lifted its output from a design capacity of 110,000m3/year.
Line II comprises Metso wood processing equipment including a debarker, chip classification and two 62in refiners, each with a 6.5MW motor. It also has a 64 MW dust-burning energy plant, a Kontra storage handling system and Anthon cut-to-size line.
Line II will focus on producing standard thickness board for furniture, while line I continues to make thin, ultra-light panels. As a proportion of overall Cabrero output, thin board represents 26%.
Masisa made further investment at its Chilean coastal Mapal plant. There, it spent US$15m on a new 150,000m3/year Wemhöner melamine laminating line and 30 million m2/year Vits impregnation unit, due to start up this September.
Regional markets all seem to be stable, with good growth potential. An example is Argentina, from where Masisa has exported 60,000m3/year of board into Brazil. But strong domestic demand, and the launch of Masisa’s Montenegro plant, mean board will be redirected to the home market. Masisa has a 180,000m3/year particleboard capacity and a 250,000m3/year MDF line in Concordia, Argentina.
Other South American countries with potential – and markets attractive to Masisa – include Peru, Colombia and those bordering the Pacific Ocean.
There is no doubt Masisa has been hit by the US housing slump and economic crisis, affecting sales of MDF mouldings and solid wood products, but, even in July, executives spoke of seeing the first signs of a price revival.
With 2007 capacity of 2.6 million m3/year at plants in Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and Chile, and ambitious growth plans, Masisa seems set to continue to dominate the Latin American panel scene.

Often considered dated and environmentally unfriendly, wet process hardboard barely features in today’s global portfolio of wood based panel producers.
Except, that is, among some large panel makers in South America and their many customers around the world. These companies argue that, with adequate environmental safeguards, their good quality, competitively-priced thin board will continue to feed a rich global niche market for some years to come.
Among the board’s staunchest defenders is Brazilian eucalypt particleboard and hardboard maker Eucatex SA of São Paulo. Despite being hit by the US downturn, its two big Washington Ironworks press lines are this year feeding new export demand from the likes of Russia and Ukraine.
But, like its fellow Brazilian hardboard maker Duratex SA, Eucatex is hedging its bets ready for the day when their traditional product finally fades into panel history.
Work is progressing on an US$81m Eucatex project to install a 250,000m3/year Dieffenbacher continuous press line to make high density fibreboard (HDF) at its Salto site. The new dry line can also produce thin MDF.
Located near Salto’s wet process lines, it is set to turn out board from May or June 2009, according to Eucatex’s youthful executive vice-president José Antonio Goulart de Carvalho.
Eucatex, which only recently emerged from Brazil’s equivalent of the US Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, has long wished to broaden its portfolio to include MDF, but it is reluctant to join the Brazilian industry’s latest capacity stampede to add large volumes of standard thickness MDF.
Rather, the group saw its chance to focus on thin fibreboard. For Eucatex, this has immediate attractions, not least because it is a Brazilian market leader in doors, laminate flooring and wall partitions. Thin board is also essential in furniture such as drawer bottoms and wardrobe backs, it points out.
In addition, with uncertainty as to just how soon the rush of new MDF capacity will be absorbed in Brazil, thin board offers a better export prospect, Jose Antonio Goulart de Carvalho told WBPI in an interview in São Paulo.
“We saw this opportunity and planned a very effective, competitive project. I think ours will be one of the most competitive plants in Brazil for thin HDF,” said the Eucatex executive vice president.
Dominated by its 21m Dieffenbacher press, with a width of 2.75m, the new HDF line will include wood preparation and refining sections from Metso, glue kitchen and blending units from Pal and Imal and saws, transport and finishing operations supplied by the Italian
company EMG.
This addition to its broad product portfolio will help Eucatex regain market share, lost over the period of Chapter 11, and its capital restructuring; company progress was set back around two years due to its financial troubles, admitted José Antonio Goulart de Carvalho.
The HDF unit was not the only scheme the group was hatching up during its recovery process.
Eucatex is considering a bolder plan to build a 500,000m3/year eucalypt MDF plant, but raw material remains the biggest challenge. Wood and land prices are still soaring, especially in Eucatex’s home state, as potential tree plantation land is being snapped up for biofuel crops.
The firm has looked at possible sites in southern Brazil, but may still locate a new line at its Botucatu site in western São Paulo state.
Further west still, it has identified promising potential wood sources in the verdant state of Mato Grosso do Sul – translated, its name means ‘Thick Southern Forest’. That resource could sustain a plant in the state.
However, the executive vice president stressed, it is too early to reveal formal plans. Eucatex has studied the domestic market prospects and believes it could grow at up to 10-15% a year to 2012, absorbing all the new capacity now going in. But there is still some uncertainty on the demand side.
“We are focusing on finishing the HDF line and putting it to work. When we start to see the end of that project, we will
have a chance to see how the market is reacting.”
Any greenfield project, along with its supporting forest, means big investment – up to US$250m, he suggested.
One further project, born from the group’s review during its recovery period, is set to reinforce the efficiency of its new Salto HDF line. At a time of spiralling raw material costs, Eucatex has gone into waste wood recycling in a big way.
Taking advantage of Salto being close to Brazil’s commercial hub of São Paulo, and the city of Campinas, it boosted the capacity of a small recycling plant. Today, it is able to turn out up to 20,000 tonnes of material a month, both to fuel energy output and for use in panel production.
With an investment of around US$15m, Eucatex is already making big cost savings running its hardboard lines. Eighty per cent of the 10,000 tonnes of current monthly waste wood output is helping to fuel its energy needs, with the residue going into panel production.
The firm gathers high grade waste in 320 skips of 15-tonnes each from a range of urban sites such as vehicle assembly plants, big stores and ports within a radius of 150km around Salto.
Eucatex strictly monitors waste quality, and depending on this and the distance wood has to be trucked to the plant, pays varying sums for material under long-term contracts with suppliers.
Its motives for recycling were the soaring cost of wood and its limited plantation resource – reduced further when it paid off part of its bank debts with forest land. Now, it is the national industry’s biggest wood recycler.
With growing demand from the new HDF line, Eucatex will utilise much of its remaining recycling capacity. At full capacity, it expects to raise the volume of waste used in panel production up to 30% of the (recycling) unit’s output, according to José Antonio Goulart de Carvalho.
“When we achieve the capacity we’re planning, we will be saving more or less 12,000ha of forest plantation [by recycling],” he predicted.
In July, when WBPI paid a ‘whistle-stop’ helicopter visit to Eucatex sites, major works were underway at Salto. Apart from the progressing HDF line, a huge new area was being carved out to allow significant expansion of the woodyard.
Salto is at the heart of what makes Eucatex distinctive – its focus on the design and development of a wide range of value-added finished products. With an eagle eye on niche market openings, it offers an array of printed, painted and laminated panel finishes. “The finished product is our strength,” declared the executive vice president.
At the Botucatu site too, we found an air of change and refurbishment at Eucatex’s 360,000m3/year medium density particleboard (MDP) plant. The firm is working on its highly productive Bison Hydro-Dyn board line, investing in panel forming and finishing. “We aim to upgrade and improve the efficiency of the line and board finish,” explained Eucatex’s consultant Paulo Amanthea.
Last November, it invested around US$9.3m to install a new nine million m2/year Wemhöner melamine laminating line alongside its Barberàn finish foil line. In December (08), Botucatu will get a new US$6m Tocchio impregnation line and an old Dieffenbacher melamine line will be upgraded and switched to Salto.
Despite all the new spending, Eucatex is still committed to hardboard. It has invested heavily in water treatment at Salto and considers its plant environmentally friendly.
Its executive vice president accepts that one day wet process hardboard will die out. But, so long as global demand continues and there is still life in its quality, low-cost product, Eucatex will keep the lines running.

Chilean brothers Horacio and Rodrigo Fernandez and their company Polincay have introduced a breath of competitive fresh air to Chile’s panel industry, for years dominated by two giant national groups.
In little over a decade, Polincay became a leading MDF mouldings exporter to the US, Chile’s top flush door manufacturer, and is now South America’s first producer of MDF panels on a Chinese-built line.
After challenging Chile’s giants Masisa SA and Celulosa Arauco y Constitución SA in the formerly lucrative US MDF mouldings business, Polincay this year launched its first MDF plant.
Conscious of their company’s reliance on its giant competitors for supply of the MDF raw material for its mouldings, the brothers finally decided they too would have to get into the panels business.
A team of 50 Chinese workers spent eight months assembling a 150,000m3/year line in the isolated southern Chilean community of La Unión. The modified line is one of only two supplied to foreign panel makers by the firm Shanghai Jiecheng Baihe Woodworking Machinery Co Ltd. The other was to Azerbaijan.
The new plant started up in January 2008 and by June, when WBPI visited Polincay, MDF output had reached 50% of capacity. The unit is due to achieve full capacity by this November according to the firm.
Polincay’s MDF line is part of an ambitious integration project which includes an existing sawmill, supplying up to 100,000m3 of finger jointed mouldings annually, and the addition of two Chinese low-pressure laminating lines, each with a 36,000m3/year capacity.
In addition, Polincay expects to launch a Chinese-built thin MDF Mende-type line in La Unión next year.
The meteoric rise of the youthful Fernandez brothers in the wood products industry began in the 1990s. While Rodrigo (43) had his own successful graphic arts business, Horacio (48) was a manager at a Chilean construction firm.
There, from simple solid wood picture frame mouldings, he developed new pre-finished MDF mouldings, US exports of which grew rapidly from 1993. Two years later, Rodrigo and Horacio jumped at the opportunity to buy the wood products operation when the parent group offered it for sale.
Polincay enjoyed several years of booming US export sales of its quality primed mouldings, although competition from the Chilean giants, and from US producers, began to hot up. In 2000, the brothers also set up a flush door making operation in Santiago which now manufactures some 80,000 doors per month.
But then came 2005, and, with the US market downturn and export prices plunging, Polincay found its mouldings business squeezed. Panel volumes supplied by its big competitors were being restricted, leaving the small company unable to fully service its North American customers, the Fernandez brothers claim.
It was then they finally vowed to invest in their own panel production. “MDF volume was not really sufficient and we were losing customers, and there was no other way [forward].
“Now, we can retain the confidence and trust of our customers that we will still be in the [mouldings] business when the market gets better,” explained Rodrigo Fernandez.
But he and Horacio faced a steep learning curve. They were not only launching their first panel manufacturing line, but using technology from China never before operated in the region.
Keen to select the best possible MDF line, but with no background in panel making, he and his brother hired a plant manager with exceptional experience.
Victor Maruri served 25 years with Masisa, the region’s top panel manufacturer. He managed both particleboard and MDF plants for the group in Chile, Argentina and Mexico and was well placed to choose and set up the new line.
After rejecting the option of buying secondhand, the brothers and Mr Maruri went to China where they visited several machinery suppliers including Suzhou-based Sufoma Machinery Co Ltd, Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Co Ltd (SWPM) and Shanghai Jiecheng Baihe Woodworking Machinery Co Ltd.
The Chileans viewed a number of lines from each firm, operating in China. Although Baihe had little export experience, Polincay found it easier than the other suppliers to deal with. There, they could talk to engineers and top executives as opposed to just sales people, and Baihe was more flexible over essential line modifications, recalled Mr Maruri.
For its line, Polincay required the addition of a chip washer, additional green chip silos and a comprehensive control system. The Chinese line had a limited Siemens control system, but Polincay’s plant manager preferred to expand this using the more familiar Allen-Bradley system, he recalled.
The deal was finally clinched, when Baihe agreed not only to supply its equipment, but also to modify and assemble the line in Chile and bring it to start-up. For that, Polincay was to pay just US$12m, said Mr Maruri.
A further US$8m had to be invested at the 5ha La Unión site on plant foundations and building construction, much of which was handled by a Chilean building firm.
During line construction – from March to December 2007 – materials for the plant, from pipework to the line itself, were shipped across the Pacific from China.
Polincay made novel arrangements in rural La Unión to accommodate the big team of Chinese Baihe and sub-contract workers employed at different stages of construction. Apart from providing a small house near the site, Polincay hired six big shipping containers, specially converted into living quarters complete with windows, bathrooms and bedrooms!
Communication proved difficult as few of the Chinese even spoke English, let alone Spanish. But Polincay executives avoided the need to translate via English by enlisting the aid, as interpreter, of a Chinese who had studied Spanish in Colombia.
Polincay began its first 100% eucalypt MDF panel sales to Chilean customers in April this year. Earlier output was dedicated to its mouldings business. In June the company exported its first board to Mexico and Costa Rica.
“At present, because of the bad situation in the US market, we are selling board to other customers in Chile and abroad...Chilean customers are pleased they have greater market choice since Polincay’s start-up. The market was dominated by the two big groups,” Mr Maruri told WBPI.
The Fernandez brothers are confident they can exploit a number of fresh
markets for laminated MDF across their region, including Brazil, Peru and the Caribbean states.
The Chinese MDF line, bigger than Baihe’s standard equipment capacity, has a 15-opening press.
When the line reaches full capacity, Polincay still aims to devote half its MDF output to mouldings, with most of the rest dedicated to melamine faced panels. Both low-pressure lines, supplied by Xinxieli (Suzhou) Enterprise Development Co Ltd, were up and running by this August.
“What we’re trying to do here [at Polincay] is to focus on added-value business. That’s why we’re aiming to produce 5,000m3/month of melamine covered MDF board,” explained Horacio.
With their first MDF line now in
operation, the brothers are focused on the project’s next stage. But, it is clear they face a major new challenge in realising their original plan for the Mende-type thin MDF line in the current economic
climate.
Although the La Unión site has much of the infrastructure required for a second panel line, and Polincay has agreed in principle that Baihe should supply it, the machinery price has soared since 2006; Polincay has estimated that it will need to find around US$15m to cover the cost of installing the second line.
Chinese suppliers faced with the rising cost of steel and other raw materials, and reduced government export subsidies, have hiked their machinery prices in the past two years. If Polincay was purchasing its first MDF plant today, the cost would have almost doubled, the brothers estimated.
In June, escalating prices meant Polincay could not possibly still include the Mende line in its total project budget of US$40m; spending on the sawmill, MDF line 1 and laminating already totalled US$32m.
Horacio and Rodrigo Fernandez concluded they would need to find a foreign industry partner, willing to share the burden of installing the thin board line. Polincay has already attracted financial investors from Chile.
When WBPI met them, the brothers voiced optimism that the all-important US market was showing clear signs of recovery. “We are confident of future growth and we are now waiting for the market to improve a little more and to find suitable partners to allow Polincay to proceed with this project,” Rodrigo said in June.
Polincay plans to produce 3-5mm thick MDF panels primarily for use in its doors business. Currently, not enough thin board is being manufactured to sustain this demand.
After that, the firm will sell its Mende product to third party operations for use in such applications as furniture drawer bottoms, according to Mr Maruri.
Other applications may include wainscot room mouldings and finish foil
covered panels for the Central American market.
Polincay, which runs its door and mouldings plants on the outskirts of the Chilean capital Santiago, located its sawmill and panel units so far south in La Unión to take advantage of available wood resources.
Forest plantation in Chile’s eighth Region of Biobio, inland from Concepción, is dominated today by the country’s two big forest product groups. But in the 10th Region of Los Lagos, there are ample supplies of eucalypt forest, grown in anticipation of a Japanese pulp mill which never materialised.
Today, there are around 15,000ha of eucalypt forest plantations on small third-party land holdings within 100km of Polincay’s La Unión plant. Growth rates at this latitude are good, at about 25m3/ha/year, yielding around 350,000m3/year, according to the firm’s forestry manager Francisco Gallardo.
In Santiago, Polincay’s mouldings plant is an impressive operation. Despite the current cutback in US demand, it continues to work with one shift at almost 70% of capacity. The plant is seeking new markets and has begun to make headway in Australia, among other countries, according to Pedro Laneri from the export department.
The plant runs two MDF strip cutting lines, together capable of turning out 150m3/day; five moulding machines; five independent paint priming lines and three integrated moulding, painting, drying and sanding lines.
Polincay manufactures MDF mouldings ranging in thickness from 9-30mm, all pre-finished for the market. The products are exported from the port of San Antonio near the Chilean capital, whereas panels sold abroad are shipped via the southern port of San Vicente.
Polincay’s nearby doors plant has a capacity of 1.5 million flush doors/year. Its output is divided into two sections – standard doors and special ready-finished made-to-order doors.
Apart from their industrial interests, the Fernandez brothers run a Santiago art gallery where they are helping to promote the wider recognition and celebration of the work of Chilean artists.
So devoted are they to this cultural cause, that in 2004 they sponsored the decoration of Santiago metro station with four giant colourful murals created by Chilean artist Rodolfo Opazo. A copy of one of them is displayed in their company’s reception.
The brothers’ passion for art is evident even to visitors to their Santiago plant offices. The reception area has many paintings by contemporary national artists.
Not only have Rodrigo and Horacio Fernandez brought a little colour to the world of panel making, but their enterprise and determination is creating a minor revolution at the heart of the South American wood panels sector.  n

Regarding particleboard capacity in North America and western Europe, never has our headline phrase been more appropriate. The 2008 WBPI survey of particleboard capacity reveals that for North America and the EU15 countries, capacity in 2007 increased by just 0.4%. Overall capacity in the entire region including eastern Europe and Russia increased by 4.6% or 2,769,000m3 – entirely located in eastern Europe.
The macro-economic parameters
governing North America and the EU15 were not at all conducive to expansion activities in particleboard and, in fact, contributed to a virtual paralysis of
the industry.
The analogy of the Western Front in Europe in World War One is quite apposite; the industry has almost reached the stage of ‘trench warfare’.
There are small forays forwards, matched by various retreats, but the strategic picture is stagnation. However, for the protagonists – those in the trenches – it has been (and will be for a year or so) a hard slog to ‘keep their feet out of the mud’ and to avoid ‘sticking their heads over the parapet’!
As tables 1 and 3 show, the actual number of protagonists is declining as well. This has had a marked effect in Canada where, as shown in table 2, average line size has jumped to the highest level of all regions involved. This is the result of the combined effect of four line closures and the new large installation at Sonae Tafisa’s Lac Megantic mill.

North America
There have been no reported changes during 2007 for the US and Mexico. Indeed, there is no reported ‘capacity creep’ either. The US saw a one-third drop in housing starts compared with 2006 (and as recently as July 2008, housing starts were at a 17-year low).
With major uncertainties as to future fixed and variable costs of particleboard production, the industry has no low-risk options, other than to stay in the trenches for the time being.

EU15
There was a 0.5% increase in capacity recorded in this region for 2007. Within EU economic growth, this represents a retrenchment – hardly surprising given the poor economic performance of several of the major economies during the year, which has continued during 2008 and is likely to worsen into 2009.
2007 (and 2008) has seen particleboard prices at variable cost levels as demand slackened swiftly in some of the leading consuming countries. Without offering a diatribe on housing recession, credit crunch, slowing exports and an increasing share of imports, suffice to say these factors have not helped.
During 2007 in the EU15 there was more talk of mill closures than there was of new projects. The UK accounted for virtually all of the capacity growth that there was in the EU15.

Other Europe
Capacity in the rest of Europe (‘other Europe’) grew by 16.7% during the year with new mills coming on stream in Russia, Romania, Lithuania and Slovakia.
The latter was the most notable for being the first major project in this region
incorporating the Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery Company’s (SWPM) continuous press. This, naturally, was at
a Kronospan site, since Kronospan
owns SWPM.
There was little change in Turkey – other than a slight downward revision in capacity, principally because of statistical adjustments. About 1.25 million m3 of new particleboard capacity was opened in Russia, which consequently became the fourth largest producer in the world behind China, Germany and the US.

Future Capacity Changes
The combined capacity of North America and the EU15 will decline during 2008 by 2.2%, or nearly one million m3, as shown in tables 5 and 6.
Table 5 is unusual in that it shows, for the first time, no effective increases in capacity for two consecutive years in North America. The industry seems to have no new projects for particleboard in the pipeline and neither does it report very much in the way of capacity creep.
Adjustments to existing lines could have a small impact on unit fixed costs but variable costs are the real problem.
Extra production could impact gross sales values but where is the demand? There seems to be a tendency (noted in previous years) for operators to attempt to increase panel unit value. This takes the form of surface finishing, cutting-to-size and low-emission boards, for example. There are rewards, pitfalls and challenges in this strategy as well.
However, medium to long-term, if managed adroitly, it affords a more secure option – if such a word can be used at this time!
At the end of 2007, Flakeboard in North America announced suspension of production at one line in Albany. The line is not dismantled and is still shown as existing in 2007 and 2008. With little or no prospect for a market reversal in 2009, this line may yet close permanently, which would mean a loss in capacity of 180,000m3 per annum.
Among the EU15 mills there is only one major new line – at Egger, Rambervillers in France, but three smaller lines will close, resulting in a neutral impact on French total capacity.
Closures will also occur at Genk, Belgium and Cella in Spain.
However, on a more positive note, Kronospan’s mill at Bischweier in Germany will add a net gain of 206,000m3 per annum, while the Saviola mill at Viadana in Italy will also make a net gain, with press changes, of about 100,000m3 per annum (see WBPI Aug/Sept 2008, p46).
Overall, though, EU15 capacity will decline by about 200,000m3 per annum.
More worrying is that there are no reported gains for 2009. Why will this come about? It is sufficient to cite Spain as an example.
In 2006, Spain saw a record of 920,000 dwelling starts being made. During 2007/08, such starts will fall to 300-500,000 units. This volume drop is greater than the total number of housing starts in several EU15 countries such as the UK, France or Germany.
It might be early to make such a prediction but it is not likely that EU15 will ever regain its share of regional, or even world, capacity. EU15 capacity in fact looks set to remain sluggish for at least five, and maybe even 10, years.
Table 7 shows the upward march of the other European country capacities – Turkey and Russia in particular. The size of the new Turkish mills is surprising, given the acute raw material situation in that country.
Table 8 illustrates clearly the future role of ‘Other Europe’ in the Western World’s particleboard industry. Time will tell if Russian and Turkish advances are too bold.

How the Listing was Compiled
The WBPI listings for 2007 (2006 figures) were reviewed and modifications made using other published sources and data received directly from the mills. Published information was reviewed for news of capacity changes. These sources included relevant trade magazines, association reports and equipment suppliers’
reference lists.
Self-completion enquiry forms were
distributed to the mills, requesting current and future capacity data. These forms contained the information the mills provided the previous year. Other questions were asked about non-standard production, future production rates, price movements and cost changes. The form was also posted on a special website. Responses amounted to 61% of the North American industry and 31% of existing European capacity.
The mills’ own reported capacities are used wherever possible because this is the basis upon which they make their estimates of future capacity and production changes. Where this information is not available, published sources are used, usually on the basis of 330 operating days per year.
Conversion of ft² to m3/year is made with 1,000 ft² equal to 1.77m3.

The joint Annual General Meetings of the EPF and FEIC are normally held in June. However, this year, due to the fact that the UEFA European Football Championships were partly held in Vienna – meaning no hotel rooms were available in June – the meetings were moved to mid-July.
Whilst the major part of the three-day gathering is taken up with committee meetings of the two organisations, they jointly hold an open meeting at which both presidents summarise the past year and look ahead to the future. There are also presentations from suppliers to the panel industry and, this year, a very interesting presentation by Professor Sten Nielsson, acting director of the IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria) on globalisation/competitiveness of the forest sector.
Ladislaus Döry, president of the EPF, gave the first presentation under the chairmanship of Kris Wijnendaele, secretary general of both EPF and FEIC.
Mr Döry began by announcing an “historic” decision by the EPF to introduce a new standard for low emission board.
This had been approved in principle, with only one member abstaining, during the federation’s general assembly.
In reviewing the European panel industry’s market developments and challenges in 2007, the president reported a turnover for the woodworking industries as a whole of e230bn in the EU-27 countries and a positive year. However, he counselled caution, since the market deteriorated by the end of the year and the first few months of 2008 had been “rather difficult for most [panel] producers”.
Furniture accounted for the largest sub-sector of the woodworking industries by far, at 49%, reported Mr Döry.
In the woodworking industries overall, there were 2.9 million jobs and 380,000 enterprises in the EU-27.
For the panel industry, particleboard accounted for 63% of production, MDF 21% and OSB 6%.
Overall particleboard production grew by 3.5% to almost 37.2 million m3, excluding Russian and Turkish production.
Germany remains at number one in particleboard production rankings, with 8.1 million m3, while Poland took over from France in second place, with 4.5 million m3 in 2007 – 15.8% up on 2006. French production grew by 2.3% to 4.4 million m3, while Italy and Spain decreased their production slightly and held on to fourth and fifth positions.
Lithuania, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Romania and Sweden all showed strong growth rates.
Particleboard capacity expansions for 2008 were listed by Mr Döry in Latvia (+80,000m3), Slovakia (+500,000m3) and Romania (+600,000m3), while Belgium will showed a reduction of 150,000m3.
For MDF in 2007, production excluding Turkey grew by 2.8% to reach 13.3 million m3 in 2007 and this compares with +7.1% average since 1999. Consumption was reported at 12.1 million m3. Growth of 3.5% in production is forecast for 2008.
Three new MDF plants became operational in 2007 said Mr Döry, being one in Poland for Pfleiderer, one in Germany for Classen and one in Hungary for MOFA. However, he pointed out that these only became operational in the second half of the year, so the increase seen in output was mainly due to higher capacity utilisation at the existing plants. Some capacity extensions were also completed in the second half, resulting in average capacity utilisation decreasing to 89%; it was higher in the first half, but demand weakened in the second half.
Germany held on to its leading position again in 2007, increasing its production by 3.7% to almost 4.3 million m3.
Spain added 200,000m3, confirming its second place, and Poland added 250,000m3, both in 2008. At 1.3 million m3, this made Poland Europe’s third biggest producer. France and Italy completed the top five producing countries.
Turkey put in an exceptionally strong performance, registering a production of 1.9 million m3.
Turning his attention to OSB, the president reported that production grew by 7.5% in 2007, while consumption grew by 6%.
Overall production last year rose to 3.7 million m3, with growth largely due to a new mill in Latvia and the Czech plant, built in 2006, coming into full production. Mr Döry reported consumption of 3.0 million m3. Capacity in 2007 was 4.4 million m3, he said.                              © p18
ß p16   Once again, we find Germany at the top of the producers’ list with its three plants accounting for around 30% of total European production.
There is talk, said Mr Döry, of a further 500,000m3 of OSB production planned for both Latvia and Romania and he questioned what the consequences would be if these projects were to be realised.
Turning to the vexed issue of renewable energy as a tool to combat climate change, the president said: “We [the EPF] are saying that it is better to use wood than to burn it”.
“Nobody has done a proper calculation on the availability of wood for energy production and the EU’s energy objectives in its 20/20 plan will affect our producer members. If those objectives are not met, there will be trouble for the wood industry; or the energy sector….
“The priority must be to get reliable data on current wood use and future availability to serve as a basis for policy making,” continued Mr Döry. “The woodworking industry gives value to the forest and respects the carbon cycle.”
Mr Döry went on to outline the EPF’s work in promoting the use of wood and the CEI-Bois Roadmap 2010’s aim to increase the use of wood based products by 4% a year. “It has been estimated this would sequester an additional 150 million tons of CO2 a year,” he said.
The president went on to outline a proposed new concept for carbon sequestration credits.
“The cost of wood at the moment is lower than the cost of oil, therefore there is a real threat here,” he warned.
Mr Uldis Bikis, retiring president of the FEIC, spoke next. He advised the assembly that Turkey had recently joined his plywood manufacturers’ federation, as had a second producer from the Czech Republic and a Russian producer. Another major Russian producer had also applied for membership at the time of the annual meeting.
“There are 75 plywood producers in 21 countries today. The FEIC member companies had a combined production of 3.9 million m3 of plywood and 0.3 million m3 of blockboard in 2007, while the four member companies in Russia added another 400,000m3 of plywood during 2007,” he said.
Italy and Poland produced more plywood last year, while others such as the Czech Republic, France, Greece and Latvia had to reduce their production. Most FEIC member countries saw their production remain fairly stable compared to 2006, reported Mr Bikis.
The largest end-use category for plywood was the construction industry, at 40% share. Furniture was second, at 18%.
“Wood availability continued to be a major issue for the European plywood industry in 2007, with wood costs increasing at a strong pace, and producers in several countries suffered a lack of wood, partly due to climatic problems. In northern Europe, harvests were again complicated by the warm winter, while other countries suffered increasing competition for wood.
“On top of this, Russia started imposing export duties on logs from July 2007. These duties are increasing and are scheduled to amount to e50 per m3 from January 2009,” said the FEIC president.
“FEIC, in cooperation with the European Confederation of Woodworking Industries (CEI-Bois), managed to convince the European Commission at the highest political level to take up this very important issue with the Russian authorities to attempt to create equal opportunities for all market players,” says the plywood federation’s Annual Report.
Plywood imports in FEIC member countries in 2007 increased by 6.1% to more than four million m3 and by 5.7% in the EU-27, reported Mr Bikis.
“Thus the EU-27 imported 5.5 million m3, meaning that extra-European imports have been accelerating at a much higher pace than intra-European trade. Chinese imports registered the strongest growth rates, at plus 38% or 1.3 million m3, making China the EU’s biggest foreign plywood supplier, while Russia has gone from first to third position.”
Mr Bikis reported an unhappy state of affairs as exports decreased for the first time in years.
Exports of FEIC members fell 3.4%, while for the EU-27 they fell 6.3%, reported the president.
“Also, unfair competition continues despite the anti-dumping regulations,” he added.
“Plywood consumption in 2007 started in a promising way, but was then increasingly affected by the economic situation. “However, within the FEIC member countries, consumption of plywood gained 10.8%, increasing for the sixth consecutive year.”
In his published annual report to his members, Mr Bikis said: “Our industry is facing several serious challenges for the future, particularly in the cost and raw material supply side of our businesses.
“Ensuring a sustainable raw material supply of high quality at affordable cost is everybody’s top priority even though there are huge regional differences in the reasons for supply tightness.
“The second big issue is energy cost and other side-effects of the oil price hike.
“Thirdly and very importantly, the developments in Russia may have tremendous consequences for our industry. There are many questions relating to Russia: what will be its strategy for oil and gas exports and how will this affect the economies in Europe and the rest of the world? What will be the effects of the export taxes on the supply of Russian logs to Europe and to China? Will this result in more exports of semi-finished wood products to Europe on the one hand and increasing costs and reduced log supply to China on the other?
To monitor and steer these and other huge future challenges, I am convinced that we need an even stronger European federation”.  n

For further information on EPF and FEIC or to purchase copies of their annual reports, contact the joint secretariat at: info@europanels.org or www.europanels.org

Schattdecor is to build a brand new state-of-the-art printing line in the US.
The Thansau, Germany, headquartered decor printer announced the plans on August 20th at an evening reception for customers and press during the IWF exhibition in Atlanta.
The 100,000ft2 new facility is currently under construction in St Louis, Missouri and is expected to produce its first roll of decor paper in the fourth quarter of 2009.
Making the announcement, Schattdecor ceo Reiner Schulz said that the company has been in the US market since 1995, beginning by importing decors from Germany, and decided that the time was right to support the market with its own printing line.