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.