A new approach

January 2013 saw a new partner join company founder Adreano Stocco in Instalmec srl of San Giorgio di Nogaro, Udine, on the Gulf of Venice.

Michael Diefenbach has 30 years' experience in the panel machinery industry, as well as having spent seven years as a director of an Italian particleboard manufacturer, the Trombini Group, which uses 100% recycled wood.

Since joining Instalmec, Mr Diefenbach has worked with Instalmec's R&D engineers in developing new machines to improve productivity and lower costs, such as those for energy and raw materials.

Today, said Mr Stocco when we met in his office in June, Instalmec is supplying most of the big-name panel manufacturers. These include Kronospan, Swiss Krono, Sonae, Egger, Swedspan, Unilin and Pfleiderer, in the fields of particleboard, MDF and OSB production, as well as being increasingly involved in pellet production.

"We have produced machines and complete plants to process and clean recycled wood, making the biggest such plant for Pfleiderer's Grajewo plant in Poland," said Mr Stocco.

"In the fibre sector, we have designed our 'High-Efficiency MDF Cleaner', which eliminates cork, sand, plastic, glue particles and wood shives. We have sold two since its launch only six months ago and it produces a very high quality surface on the panels. This kind of machine is being requested more and more and has a great future because it improves the surface of the panels and enables our customers to sell top-quality boards without any complaints from their customers."

The system is composed of two stages: the Separator and the Super-Separator. In particleboard, Mr Stocco said his company is not only offering a plant that cleans recycled wood before the dryer, but has also designed a system for the dry end that gets rid of all minerals and so on.

"This system helps our customers to use 100% recycled wood to produce a panel as good as one made with virgin wood," he said. "We are currently working on a plant with 60 tonnes per hour (tph) capacity, with very low installed energy."

For drying, Instalmec has designed a system within the dryer to recover heat energy in order to keep the temperature in the dry area separators raised. This, says the company, saves heat energy in the press and reduces press times compared with the use of 'cold' wood.

Another new system from the company is the 'Gravimetric Separator', a patented machine used as a pre-dryer in particleboard and pellet production. It replaces the traditional omega-type pre-dryer, which does not incorporate separation.

Instalmec has been around since Mr Stocco founded it in 1979 and of course has many other well-known machines out in the market: ferrous metal separators; roller screens; kinetic separators; induction separators; nylon separators; densimetric and water separators; and pneumatic screens and sifters, as well as the products already mentioned and a host of others. Hammer mills and dryers have also long been part of the Instalmec offering.

"Our Low Pressure Drop Cyclone, LPD, is not so new - we have supplied over 300 worldwide - but it is one of our big success stories," said Mr Stocco.

"Traditional cyclones are very tall and sometimes this is a problem for our customers in obtaining planning permission for a factory, as well as being very prone to high wear.

"So our idea was to create a more compact cyclone with a horizontal spiral. Seeing my young daughter dancing a pirouette gave me the idea!

"The traditional cyclone has a vertical spiral, with the wood material being fed into the top, where it causes a lot of wear due to its high velocity. My idea was to reduce those wear problems - and the drop in pressure inherent in such cyclones, thus saving power."

In the LPD cyclone, the material enters horizontally and rises up. Mr Stocco has sufficient confidence in his invention that the company offers a five-year guarantee against wear.

To assist the company in providing such guarantees, Instalmec has its own testing laboratories in which it can build and test prototypes and also run tests using its customers' own wood supply.

Instalmec now has a very wide range of machinery for the wood preparation end of the panel factory and we only have space to detail the latest products here.

Confident in the existing and new products developed in San Giorgio di Nogaro, and his new partner in his company, it is Mr Stocco's intention this year to triple the turnover of the business that he founded 34 years ago.