Brazilian panel manufacturer Duratex SA has chosen Siempelkamp to supply continuous press lines for its two new MDF/HDF units recently announced.
The Sao Paulo-based group is investing €84m to purchase the new lines, the first one with 580,000m3/year nominal capacity to set to start up at its Itapetininga site in Sao Paulo state by December 2012.
The location of the second line, with an effective capacity of 680,000m3/year and scheduled to launch by 2015, had still not been decided in mid June. But the company did confirm it is considering one possibility of installing it at a new greenfield plant further north in the state of Minas Gerais.
This would allow it to capitalise on the rapidly expanding market in Brazil’s northeast while drawing on fresh wood resources in the western half of Minas Gerais state.
The Duratex group already owns a 1,11 millon m3/year capacity MDF/MDP complex in the state at Uberaba following its 2009 merger with Satipel Industrial to form the biggest panels producer in the Southerh Hemisphere.
That has given it a geographical advantage over the majority of Brazilian producers with operations located in the country’s southeast when shipping product to the northern national markets.
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