Major group player invests in adding value

The Mauro Saviola Group comprises a total of 16 companies involved in particleboard and MDF manufacture and surfacing, ready-to-assemble furniture and furniture component production, as well as laminate and edge-banding and resin manufacture.
Headquartered in Viadana, the Saviola group also has operations in Switzerland and Brazil, Argentina and Belgium.
Total group particleboard production capacity is in the region of 1.5 million m3 per year, with 100% of the raw material coming from waste wood, or ‘the urban forest’ as it is also known.

The largest producer of surfaced particleboard in the Saviola group is Sit srl, whose factory is located in Mortara to the southwest of Milan.
The company has a continuous particleboard press line with annual capacity of 500,000m3 per year to produce raw board, the vast majority of which is the subject of value adding for the furniture industry. To this end, Sit has four Tocchio impregnating lines, two double-length short-cycle presses by Siempelkamp and a Pagnoni single-length short-cycle press.
But Sit’s value-adding does not end there. The Mortara factory also boasts two continuous press lines for laminate production. The first is a Hymmen double band press with an effective width of 1860mm for the production of continuous pressure laminate (CPL). The second is a little more unusual; it is a press for the continuous production of high pressure laminate (HPL) and is claimed to be the most powerful isobaric double-belt press in the world.
In the same town is sister company Sacic Legno, which is dedicated to the production of melamine faced panels on a Siempelkamp short-cycle press line. The two companies produce separate ranges of decors and trade as separate entities, with Sacic Legno concentrating on smaller volume customers and Sit on large distribution.
Decor-faced panels are offered by Sit in a 1,000-design range, with the latest offering being the Xilosintex collection, reproducing the grain of valuable woods with a three-dimensional effect.
The Dieffenbacher CPS continuous raw board press line at Sit is designated Sit 2000, so you will not be surprised to learn that it started up in the year 2000. It also produces 2,000m3 of panels per day, making the name doubly appropriate.
It replaced two lines: a single-daylight Pagnoni and a Siempelkamp multi-daylight, which together had an annual capacity of 250,000m3.
The new Dieffenbacher line was not just a new line installed in an old factory – everything was new, including the concrete building in which the line stands. This is the first continuous Dieffenbacher line for the Saviola Group, and for Italy, and Dieffenbacher supplied forming, prepress, main press, cooling station, cut-tosize and intermediate robotic storage system.
The Sit factory site covers an area of 360,000m2, with 110,000m2 of that being under cover. A railway line comes directly into the site, bringing urban waste wood in 16,500 wagons a year to feed the particleboard production. Finished goods leave by road on an average of 120 trucks per day.
Preparation of the recycled wood supply is carried out on a complete recycling system supplied by Pal srl, which also supplied the gluing system.
Schenkmann & Piel supplied the rotary drum dryer, which is 30m long and 10m in diameter. The dryer exhaust is treated in an electrostatic filter.
From the forming station, the mat passes through the pre-press and enters the jaws of the giant 50m-long Dieffenbacher CPS press.
In the central control room alongside the press, computer controls monitor the entire production process, while 40 CCTV cameras cover the line from gluing to finishing, supplying images to 12 monitor screens.
On-the-line quality control, such as thickness measurement and blow detection and spark detection/extinguishing, is taken care of by GreCon equipment.
After the star cooler, boards are transferred by robot transfer truck to intermediate storage on steel bearers at the end of the line to await sanding after conditioning. Each stack of boards on these bearers is up to 4,000kg in weight.
The Steinemann sanding centre is a 12-head operation, with the heads arranged in two banks in separate soundproofed housings. The first six heads carry out the main sanding operation, while the second six are finishing heads. The result is an extremely smooth panel, ready for the application of decorative surfaces.
The thickness tolerance achieved with this sanding system is also very accurate, according to Mr Roberto Mori, general manager of the Sit operation.
This complete production line is 380m in length.
Beneath the control room is a well-equipped laboratory which not only checks the quality of the finished panels, but also closely monitors the incoming raw material. The factory has certification by SGS that the recycled raw material it is using is free of pollutants or disease.