Holding an exhibition at a time when most of Europe, and some other parts of the world, are still enjoying their summer vacation period and Atlanta's climate is not at its most congenial and calling it 'international' is stretching credibility a bit.

Thin MDF is the star of Plum Creek's Columbia Falls, Montana, mill occupying 71'2 acres of buildings in the company's complex of a plywood mill and sawmill. When they say "thin", they mean thin; thicknesses down to 1'16in are possible. That's 1.6mm. Obviously, it couldn't be done economically without a continuous press, which was part of the plan when the new thin board line was installed in 2002. There has been some equipment updating on the mill's original MDF number 1 line, which was one of the first in the United States. Processes have been thoroughly streamlined and production has increased, but most of that line is the same. It was originally designed for 70 million ft², 3'4in basis per year, but management expects 150 million ft² this year. Refining capacity has been the principal change, adding 20 million ft² just in the past two years.

Around 200 delegates attended the 2006 Decorative & Industrial Laminates Symposium (DIL) in the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta in late August. This symposium, held under the auspices of TAPPI every two years, is timed to coincide with the week in which the IWF exhibition takes place in the Georgia World Congress Centre adjacent to the Omni. The symposium covered Monday to midday Wednesday, while the exhibition this year ran from Wednesday to Saturday. Monday morning was devoted to six, thirty minute, tutorial sessions repeated throughout the morning, mostly on fairly basic subjects.

The 60th annual Forest Products Society meeting in June melded 300 wood scientists, educators, mill managers and forest industry suppliers, who heard 130 speakers and chatted with another 130 poster presenters. The gathering point was southern California's Newport Beach where the delegates, in their scarce free time, could enjoy the beaches, the surf and nearby golfing. An added feature was honouring Art Brauner who has retired from the society's top staff job, executive vice president, after 37 years of service. Thirteen society past presidents attended.

Spanish architecture is now suddenly undergoing a renaissance, with masters such as architect Santigo Calatrava leading the way with new ideas and innovations. Structural solutions are being solved at a remarkable level and the union between engineering and architecture has never been closer. "I always try to design buildings that respond to people's needs, including the need not only for functional buildings, but for buildings that represent something for the community," says Santigo Calatrava.

Canpar Industries' particleboard mill, annually producing 150 million ft², 3'4in basis, in Grand Forks, British Columbia, is not one of those flashy headline-making brand new plants. But under a patina of age leavened with some new machinery and techniques, it's North America's largest door core manufacturer. Grand Forks is somewhat off the beaten path, a scant two miles north of the US-Canadian border. It's really not on the way to anywhere, but Grand Forks is a peaceful, attractive mountain-rimmed community and Canpar is an important ingredient.

The 2006 global particleboard capacity survey contains over 60 additions and modifications to the previous mill listings as a result of new or revised data being received from operators, equipment suppliers and many other industry commentators. This report covers only the North American and European mills. Part 2, covering the mills in the 'Rest of the world', will be published in issue 6 of WBPI. Please note that although this research was conducted during the 2006 calendar year, the listings in the following pages show mill capacities as at the end of 2005 and forecast changes apply to the current year and to 2007.

When Plum Creek Timber Company's plywood mill was built in Columbia Falls Montana, US, in 1964, it was one of the many commodity mills producing sheathing which rose up in US softwood plywood's heyday, but many have gone. It is specialities that have kept many of the remaining mills - including Plum Creek's - in business, and keeping up with the latest time and labour-saving innovations is a big part of it, along with methods and equipment giving better-quality output. Encouraging employees to do their best is another big feature in Plum Creek's mills.

Thirteen nations were represented at the meeting which drew 170 participants to learn the latest about veneer and wood based panels. Kimmo Suomalainen of Raute Oy, Nastola, Finland, explained the advantages of producing 4x8ft from 8x8ft plywood, including less required labour, fewer man-hours per unit of production, less equipment and reduced trim loss. Panels are produced at l00x100in and sawn into either 4x8ft or 8x4ft with long-grain faces used in construction and short grain in industrial applications.

Public perception is everything. Is the industry producing a high-quality decorative paper based surface to compete on equal terms with solid wood, veneer or stone, or is it producing 'just laminate'?

Some 70 experts from 11 nations exchanged information in Miami Beach, Florida for the Structural Board Association's third world OSB symposium in May. The adjoining hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast will be an important OSB market during the next few years of rebuilding from recent storms. And the delegates got a personal preview of the bitter weather as thunder storms, huge hail, torrential rain and raging winds lashed their headquarters at Miami Beach Resort Hotel. The storm, which broke a long Florida drought, forced a change in meeting rooms. Containers lined the original room catching water coursing down from a leaking roof, while nearby new high-rise building construction continued in one of the US' largest building markets.

The Dare group of companies has a diverse range of products including silver paper for cigarette packets, cigarette filters, alloy wheels for cars and computer products. It entered the MDF manufacturing business in 2002 with two 80,000m³ production lines supplied by Shanghai Wood Based Panel Machinery (SWPM). Having 'tested the water' with these lines, Dare decided it was a good move and started up its first continuous-press MDF line in Danyang City, Jiangsu province in 2003, with a nominal capacity of 200,000m³.

Like several other entrepreneurs at the time, Giacomo Trombini saw the potential for a new particleboard mill in Italy and in 1960 he built his first factory in Pomposa. The other major activity of the company was in shipping, which started around the same time and is also still going strong, with the Trombini fleet now comprising nine ships with a total tonnage of 280,000. Other group industrial activities include docks in the nearby port of Ravenna, agriculture and construction. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the Italian particleboard business, Mr Trombini's company grew and flourished, in spite of the country's problems over the years with raw materials, and the company now run by his son Andrea boasts 750,000m³ of raw particleboard and around 29 million m² of melamine faced panel production per year.

World MDF capacity grew by 3.2 million m³ in 2005 - somewhat less than the exceptional 4.8 million m³ in 2004 but still a 7.6% increase. The growth in 2004 was reportedly the largest, before two years of lesser increments. This year's WBPI World MDF capacity survey would tend to support this view. It shows continued growth globally but at lower levels than the recent past. Furthermore, with some adjustments to last year's European data, it transpires that 80% of world capacity growth in 2005 was attributed to 'the rest of the World' and amounted to 2.5 million m³, or 10.7%. The 2004 survey referred to the 'old MDF world' of Europe, North America and Australasia. The old world lost its majority position in 2003/4 and by 2005 accounted for only 43% of world capacity.

Chunping Dai, organising committee chairman, explained the background of the meetings, which began in Cluny, France in 2004. He said, "The veneer industry is a dynamic and diversified sector of the wood products industry. Products include plywood, LVL, decorative veneer and light packaging. "The objective of this symposium is to bring together representatives from producers, equipment and resin suppliers, as well as researchers from around the world, to discuss key issues and opportunities." Participants heard some 40 speakers. They met in the midst of a Vancouver building boom escalated by the forthcoming 2010 Winter Olympics.

The preparation of the raw material for panel manufacture, in the form of chips and flakes, has been the sole concentration of Pal since it formed an alliance with fellow Italian company Imal in 1998 and the two firms ceased to compete in the same market areas, choosing instead to concentrate on their respective strengths. Pal has in fact been involved in wood preparation since its foundation in 1978. This alliance coincided with the beginning of a dramatic increase in the use of recycled wood for panel production - particularly particleboard. Using recycled wood is of course a real benefit to the environment as well as offering a relatively cheap source of raw material to the panel manufacturer. But it does have its own set of problems, chief of which is the contamination of the wood with a whole range of pollutants in the form of metals, sand and stones.

The rolling grasslands of northern Uruguay, for long the lone preserve of the gaucho and his grazing cattle, are gradually giving way to a fresh, green landscape of gently swaying pine and eucalyptus trees. Like the pampas breeze, the transition has been gentle, with groups of cows still wandering lazily between the precise tree lines of the plantations. But this idyllic rural scene masks what promises to be one solution to the ever-pressing search for fresh timber to meet a growing shortfall in global wood supply. One US giant in forest products which recognised the value of buying and planting timberland in Uruguay a decade ago is Weyerhaeuser Company. Today, the Washington State-based group and its joint venture partners have built up a national estate of some 130,000ha, chiefly loblolly pine and eucalyptus grandis plantations.

Termoventilmec started life as the brainchild of the Benvenuti brothers in 1951 in Treviso. In those days, the company, known today as TVM, supplied galvanised ducting for suction systems for flour mills for the food industry. In 1955, it spread its technology into the wood, mechanical and footwear industries and today 70% of its turnover is in the wood processing industry and 50% is in the panel manufacturing sector. Recycling of plastic, paper, rubber and other areas where there is airborne pollution make up the rest of the company's sales.

Transporting panels around the panel production and finishing lines is a job which needs to be done accurately and with some care, while having those panels in the right place at the right time is vital to the efficiency of the mill. Twenty years ago, EMG was founded in Pozzaglio ed Uniti, near Cremona in northern Italy to do just that. The company has always specialised in the production of special automation plants for the panel and furniture manufacturing industries and its products are to be found in every part of the factory and, these days, most parts of the world. The essential central feature of EMG's products is the movement of panels around the factory.

This is a particularly significant year for Imeas as it marks the 40th anniversary of this manufacturer of wide belt sanders and grinding machines. When it set up in business in 1966 in Villa Cortese near Milan, Imeas Spa specialised in the design and manufacture of machines to sand and grind stainless steel and wood based panels. The name of the company means, in Italian, Industria Macchine ed Attrezzature Speciali, or 'special industrial machines and tools'. Since 1996, the company has added a range of other substrates to its list of materials to sand and grind, including fibre cement board, decorative laminates, rubber, PVC and linoleum, to name but a few. And a new project for Imeas this year is to supply a calibrating line to flooring specialist Tarkett for PVC flooring panels.

After four years of operation, the Trombini Group's drying plant in Frossasco has met the expectations of both the Annovati and Instalmec technicians, says Adriano Stocco, managing director and founder of Instalmec srl. Annovati's engineers say the plant responds fully to the requirements of the original order, while the Instalmec technicians have seen the planning and processing choices of the client realised, he says. "The first 45,000kg/hour mono-tube drum dryer in Italy, created in vacuum, has thus proved to be a success both in terms of our planning and in terms of our customer's requirements. Plant characteristics were studied down to the smallest detail, which is our philosophy, so as to obtain a reliable and highly functional plant."

After more than 40 years, CMC Texpan has established a solid position in the international panel industry as a specialist in forming systems.

Dario Zoppetti, chairman of the company his father started as CMC in 1962, is content. "We are very satisfied with the existing situation - we have plenty of work to take us through to mid-2007 which is unusual in our branch of the industry," he says in his office, situated beneath the Alps and alongside the river Serio in Colzate.

Work in progress in the factory includes a four-head forming station for Egger at Hexham, UK, another for Giriu Bizonas in Lithuania and a similar set-up for PG Bison in South Africa. The capacities of these lines range from 1,000m³ a day at PG Bison to 2,600m³ a day at Egger Hexham.

The expertise of Trasmec Company Ltd is in industrial conveying and the storage of loose materials and stretches back to the formation of the company in 1954. Originally, Trasmec operated in the chemical, food, feedstuffs and seed industries, transferring its expertise to the panel industry as Italy's particleboard sector developed. Today, 90% of Trasmec's business comes from the panel industry globally. "We have a good order book because we have received so many orders for delivery through to mid-2007," said general manager Roberto Moroni, whose father Dante founded the family business.

To go to Xian in Shanxi province without visiting one of the most famous World Heritage Sites, sometimes described as the eighth wonder of the world, would be a mistake. It is one that I did not make, thanks to a conveniently placed weekend in my schedule. Discovered by four peasants in Xiyang Village in 1974, the site contains three pits where 8,000 life-size pottery soldiers and horses have been unearthed - each one unique in appearance - together with 10,000 weapons such as bronze spears and arrow heads. In another area, bronze chariots and horses have also been uncovered.

Ladislaus Döry, president of the EPF, welcomed delegates to the open part of the EPF and FEIC's joint annual meetings in Helsinki, pointing out the appropriateness of Finland as a venue, given the importance of the forest products industry to the national economy. He then welcomed Finland's minister of trade and industry, Mr Mauri Pekkarinen, who addressed the meeting. Mr Pekkarinen said that in the 1990s, the Finnish government launched its 'Time for Wood' campaign to strengthen competitiveness and ensure future development in the industry. "We wanted to raise public awareness and during the campaign, wood made a comeback and domestic use of sawn wood doubled," said the minister.

The BioComposites Centre is a self-financing business within the University of Wales, Bangor, which itself has the oldest school of agriculture and forest science in the UK. Headquartered in the university in Bangor on the north Wales coast, BioComposites offers its services to the international panel industry and other wood based product sectors. Explaining the business structure of the centre, director Paul Fowler said: "We are self-financing but with the support and infrastructure of the university behind us. We have to go out and actively seek business to fund the centre and that keeps us hungry for funds".

In a surprise announcement at the Xylexpo exhibition in May, we heard that Imal had bought a majority stake in sister company Pal. This move further cements the close relationship which the two businesses have enjoyed since 1998 when they exchanged shares in each others' companies and separated their scope of supply. In this arrangement, areas where the two companies competed directly were separated, with Imal continuing and expanding its essentially electronic-based expertise in the areas of electrical equipment, glue blending, on-the-line and laboratory quality control devices and so on, while Pal concentrated on its range of wood preparation equipment such as screens, sifters and related equipment up to the dry silo in particleboard and MDF mills. Areas of direct competition between the two companies were thus removed by re-allocating them to the most appropriate factory.

The panel industry, together with all other sectors of the wood products business, is fighting an ongoing war.

A war is made up of many battles and several of those battles have already been won by the industry and/or its representatives. Unfortunately there always seems to be another one to fight.