With its four-year-old, 180,000m³/year, Siempelkamp ContiRoll line earlier uprated to achieve regular output of 800m³/day, Fibraplac Chapas de MDF Ltda launched an identical Siempelkamp line in December 2006. By this April, it reached 75% of its initial capacity and was due to run full out by June. Fibraplac, based in Porto Alegre, the capital of Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, has already established the makings of a major wood products complex in Glorinha. The site, 50km from Porto Alegre, includes a sawmill, a building earmarked for plywood production and space for a third panel line. The firm, which has twice discarded plans to manufacture particleboard, now remains steadfast in its belief that MDF is a product of the future. It is committed to making standard thickness board aimed at Brazil's booming furniture sector. Faced, like its Brazilian MDF competitors, with raging local board demand, Fibraplac is now preparing to tackle a major bottleneck in panel finishing. Since its board making debut in 2003, the firm has depended on a single Siempelkamp-supplied low pressure laminating line. Much of its MDF production is sold as raw board to large customers who paint it themselves, but Fibraplac aims ultimately to double the proportion it laminates. To this end, the company is investing six million US dollars in two more Siempelkamp short-cycle lines, set to operate by the end of this year. "Our goal is to have 50% of our board production as melamine laminated panels. When we began laminating, we produced only 15% covered board," said Fibraplac projects manager and group adviser Umberto Pergher, when WBPI visited the firm in April. This could be achieved within three to four years, he said. Fibraplac has come a long way in a short time. Created in 2000 by the family-run Isdra Group to spearhead its entry into the panel sector, it has nimbly scaled a steep learning curve to become a respected member of Brazil's expanding MDF 'club'. It was Fibraplac that launched Brazil's current round of MDF capacity expansion projects back in 2005 with plans for its second line. It has timed its expansion well, taking advantage of sustained annual MDF market growth at home of some 15%, rising prices and board supply virtually dried up. Adding value to its panels has been a priority for Fibraplac since it started up. It invested in a US$3m Homag 1.5 million m²/year laminate flooring production line, along with its original melamine line. Early on, the Glorinha mill ran the Homag line for "a month or two", selling the resulting flooring into what is still a sluggish market. Then, with the furniture market sucking up every MDF panel the line could turn out, Fibraplac halted flooring production altogether. The firm now admits that its fears that the domestic market would not absorb all the 'MDF I' capacity were misplaced. It is restudying flooring and is hopeful it can re-launch the Homag line when the new laminating lines are running early next year, according to Mr Pergher. Flooring output will depend on the state of the Brazilian market at the time, but the executive forecast that production, once restarted, should be continuous. Estimates put Brazilian flooring growth at around 5% per year although Mr Pergher reported new homes in the country's developed southern states are increasingly fitting laminate floors. A limited volume of 7mm panels will be produced on Glorinha's 'MDF I' line with the rest of Fibraplac's expanded capacity concentrating on standard 12mm and 15mm board for furniture. The site was originally established with wood yard and fibre preparation to serve three panel lines. Elsewhere, new equipment installed as part of the 'MDF II' expansion project includes another Büttner dryer, an Imal glue kitchen and a new biomass-fuelled 50MW Vyncke energy unit. Siempelkamp's first Fibraplac line included a revolutionary one-head forming line producing greater mat uniformity and a more even fibre distribution and density. The new continuous press is 27m long and 2.75m wide. An automated intermediate storage system was provided by Siempelkamp subsidiary SHS, while a new Steinemann six-head sanding line and Siempelkamp saw complete the panel line. Although notorious for keeping its competitors, and the world, guessing about its next move, Fibraplac appears to be setting its sights on a third MDF line. The firm only occupies 20ha of the 100ha Glorinha site where it still has long-term plans to gather around it a downstream cluster of furniture plants and producers of such components as MDF mouldings. One other potential project has shown signs of progress. In 2005, Fibraplac floated the idea of entering the pine plywood business with a tentative scheme to establish a 140,000m³/year plant on the Glorinha site. The aim was to capitalise on a healthy US market for softwood plywood panels. Even though the current strength of the Brazilian currency, the Real, against a weak US dollar makes exporting an unlikely option, Fibraplac seems to be looking longer term. Last year, it completed the construction of a building for plywood beside the sawmill, although it has not yet been equipped. "We still think [softwood] plywood is a good project that Fibraplac should eventually be involved in…..we want to make best use of our pine wood. But this project is waiting for the right moment," said Mr Pergher. Anyway, the company still has a great deal on its plate with other expansion before starting on plywood, he added. After production chief Mariano Dantur do Canto left to join rival panel maker Satipel Industrial Ltda, the role of launching MDF II and future schemes has fallen to young production director Alexandre Araujo. Where Fibraplac goes from here depends crucially on the cost and future supply of its chief raw material. Competition for wood and forest plantation land in much of southern Brazil has rarely been fiercer as expanding panel and pulp producers battle sugar cane and soya crop farmers for valuable growing areas. While much of the pressure is concentrated in the states of Paraná and São Paulo, new industrial forest products schemes further south mean Rio Grande do Sul state will be the next raw material battleground. Competition for wood already comes in the form of two big pulp mills, one operated by Brazilian giant group Aracruz, as well as Satipel's Taquari particleboard mill. Meanwhile, Masisa do Brasil Ltda plans to site its second world-scale MDF plant at Montenegro, close to Porto Alegre. Since it got going, Fibraplac has doubled its own forest plantations to 30,000ha and has been planting both 'elliotti' pine and, increasingly, eucalypt at a rate of 2,000ha per year. Even so, pine still represents 90% of its forest cover. With two panel lines consuming around 100,000m³ of wood per month, the firm still relies on the state's scattered independent tree farmers for most of its supply, said Mr Pergher. Fibraplac continues to add more land to its overall 40,000ha holding, despite rising prices, with the ultimate aim of gathering a 100,000ha base, the manager said. It is already forced to truck logs up to 200km from the southernmost region of Brazil's most southerly state to satisfy the voracious demands of its industrial plant. Fibraplac remains preoccupied with developing its Glorinha complex, where a third panel line, probably MDF, is clearly on the cards soon but the firm has not ruled out locating future capacity further north in other Brazilian states, where it has other product factories. Today, the company is convinced particleboard, even with its locally conceived fresh image as 'medium density particleboard (MDP)' is "not a good business" to be in. Although still the furniture sector's major panel material, it is a mature product, without MDF's dynamic growth prospects, the manager insisted. Even so, in the ever-changing world of panels, Fibraplac seems likely to hedge its bets and keep its 1,500m³/day particleboard line project on ice. Amidst all the mystery surrounding group president Alberto Isdra's panel sector plans, what is clear is that Fibraplac, now a member of Brazil's board industry association ABIPA, is already a fully-fledged player on the panel scene.