ZOW 2007 will display a diversity of products in every product group, thematically arranged under the categories: 'Fittings: Furniture in Motion', 'Elements & Systems: Furniture with Added Value' and 'Materials & Surfaces: Furniture Protection and Style' with 'Logistics' being a new sector to be introduced this year.

Right beside the wide and majestic Mahakam river sits the extensive veneer based products factory of Sumalindo Lestari Jaya (SLJ). Founded in 1980 as a natural forest concession holder and plywood manufacturer in Samarinda on Borneo, PT Sumalindo Lestari Jaya (SLJ) is still producing up to 15,000m³/month of plywood at its Loa Janan factory on the edge of this capital city of Kalimantan Timur province (p50). The company also diversified into MDF in 1994, building a factory up-river from Samarinda (see p44), while more recently it has also gone into the production of laminated veneer lumber (LVL) at Loa Janan. All that manufacturing capacity requires a secure and sustainable wood resource and SLJ has expended considerable effort on that front in recent years.

Right beside the Mahakam river sits the extensive veneer based products factory of Sumalindo Lestari Jaya (SLJ). That river provides the factory's lifeline as logs are floated from its concessions in Kalimantan right into the factory premises. The current factory at Loa Janan dates from 1982 when it had four production lines. In 1984, two 'jumbo' lines were added and in 1990 the company added a two-daylight Raute press for the application of paper overlay, phenolic film facing and decorative v-grooved panels. There are three main product lines manufactured here.

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

On my last visit to Indonesia at the end of 2005, it was not practicable for me to visit Sumatera Prima Fibreboard's (SPF) MDF line, but WBPI carried my interview with marketing manager Mr Tee TK in Jakarta about the company and the national issues with which it, and all panel lines there, have to deal (issue 1, 2006, p48). In December 2006 I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to visit that MDF mill and to talk to SPF's operations director John Hendarso about the 'birth' of the line - the company's first in panel manufacturing - in 2003 and about the company's plans for future expansion.

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

My journey to visit a mill I have long wanted to see began with a two-hour flight from Jakarta on Java island to Balikpapan on the east coast of the island of Borneo, in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan. Then came a two-and-a-half hour drive north to Samarinda, arriving at midnight. I was glad to put off the rest of the journey to the mill in Tanjung Harapan until the morning and to check into an hotel in Samarinda, a quite large town supported principally by coal and oil.

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

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

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

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