Accsys Technologies’ CEO Jelena Arsic van Os describes the start-up of its joint venture Accoya modified wood plant in Kingsport, Tennessee as a “big milestone” for the company. Accoya USA is its second acetylation production operation and opens the door to growth in sales and increased geographic reach across North America. And that’s not the whole story. It also creates potential to develop the Accoya business further in Europe, where Accsys’ original and recently expanded plant in Arnhem can now concentrate its resources.
The US$136m new facility in the US is a 60/40 partnership with Eastman Chemical Company. The two have a pre-existing relationship. Eastman is one of Accsys Arnhem’s long-term suppliers of acetic anhydride (Ac2O) the core ingredient for the acetylation process used to manufacture Accoya and it makes the chemical at its Kingsport headquarters site, hence the location for the new Accsys plant.
“It’s the ideal synergistic relationship,” said Dr Arsic van Os. “For Accsys, having this proximity to a key raw material, gives us great security of supply, which is very important for us. For Eastman it provides a valuable off take for one of their big product ranges locally. The by-product of our acetylation process is acetic acid, which at our new Kingsport facility, can go straight back to Eastman to be recycled back into acetic anhydride. It’s a sustainable loop. So, from all sides it absolutely made sense to form the joint venture.”
Discussions between the partners have been on-going for a while, but it was in 2022 that the new plant got the green light. The facility is modelled on the Arnhem site and has two acetylation reactors giving it an initial capacity of 43,000m3 of Accoya per year.
“Following our recent expansion at Arnhem, our Dutch site can produce 80,000m3 annually. Combine that with Kingsport’s production and our output will be double what it was two years ago,” said Dr Arsic van Os.
Moreover, she added, there is scope to expand the Kingsport site to an eventual capacity of 170,000m3.
Accsys is clearly confident the appetite for Accoya in North America is there.
“It’s important to stress that we are not starting in the market from scratch,” said Dr Arsic van Os. “We have an established distribution network and customer base, which has been taking around 20% of our output from Arnhem. We also have a very capable management and commercial team taking care of sales and supply locally. So, we have the basis from which to grow, and we see major potential in the market. In fact, market research suggests that the addressable market in North America is 8.6 million m3. Currently we have less than 1% of that, so the opportunity is huge. North America is one of the largest, and from our perspective, most attractive wood products markets in the world.”
The indicators also point to that market potential growing further, she maintained.
“The forecasts are for increased construction and infrastructure development in the US, and we are seeing key trends in our favour in market development in both Europe and North America,” she said. “Wood products are being used more to replace very carbon intensive materials like steel and concrete and new regulation, notably in Europe, is also favouring use of wood as a sustainable building material. There is also a trend towards biophilic design on both sides of the Atlantic, with architects and designers specifying more natural products and materials.”
Within the timber sector, says Accsys, Accoya also has particular advantages.
“We occupy a unique space in the market” said Dr Arsic van Os. “We have the only product backed by a 50-year lifetime guarantee, thanks to the durability and stability resulting from the acetylation process, and it will perform equally well in a freezing snowy winter in the Colorado mountains as it will in the warm and sunny climate of Malibu.”
Accsys says it also has the advantage of having a range of high-profile applications of Accoya acting as billboards for the product internationally. These range from the £22m Merisol mansion in Malibu, billed as California’s first zero-carbon home and featuring Accoya cladding inside and out, including in a charred finish, to the 330m-wide, 72m-high ‘landscraper’ which is Google’s new London headquarters. The latter has a 23,000m2 façade of glass and Accoya specified by architects and designers Heatherwick Studios. Accoya has also been extensively used in Wood City, the highly publicised timber-based sustainable neighbourhood development in Helsinki, which provides homes for 17,000 people.
“We have these great projects that we can refer specifiers and customers to, that can give them confidence that Accoya is the right product choice in terms of both technical performance and appearance,” said Dr Arsic van Os.
Accsys has the same business model in North America as in Europe, trading via distribution partners and also providing an approved manufacturing programme, offering training, marketing support and technical back up to end-users to help them make the most of Accoya.
“We are now expanding our network geographically, to position ourselves to serve all the key regions, to provide good access to the product and service across America and Canada,” said Dr Arsic van Os.
The raw material of the Kingsport plant will be the same as that used by the Arnhem facility, FSC, plantation-grown radiata pine from New Zealand.
“We are always looking at other species and the possibility of diversifying our raw material supply,” said Dr Arsic van Os. “But we will only do it if we are guaranteed to match the quality and aesthetics we achieve with radiata pine and if other species are backed by an equally strong sustainability story. We’re not quite there yet.”
Accsys also produces feedstock for Tricoya in Arnhem, which is acetylated fibre used by manufacturing partners, MEDITE and Finsa, to create modified wood-based panel products. Accsys recently discontinued the construction of a standalone Tricoya plant at Hull in the UK, to focus on investing in Tricoya feedstock production in Arnhem. This, says Accsys, will allow it to continue to drive efficiencies at one location. Currently there are no plans to replicate this operation at Kingsport.
“We have three great assets; the Kingsport plant in the US, our Accoya plant in Arnhem and our Accoya Color plant in Barry in the UK,” said Dr Arsic van Os. “We have enough capacity now and our plan is to use that to maximum effect and, in what we see as another key deliverable of our expansion strategy, to improve the customer experience with Accoya.”
Expansion of sales and market reach in Europe as well as North America is a key focus.
“With our expansion at Arnhem and now the US plant in operation, we are in a position to offer European customers significantly improved availability and flexibility of supply,” said Dr Arsic van Os. “And there is plenty of space for growth. We also commissioned research into the potential of the Accoya business in Europe and it concluded it has an addressable market here of 1.8 million m3, of which, again, we currently hold a very small percentage. We believe eastern Europe in particular holds potential as we still have fairly low visibility there.”
Accsys is backing its expansion with a major marketing drive.
“We are looking at our branding strategy and will be using all possible resources to raise awareness of Accoya, with a particular focus at the moment on architects and specifiers,” said Dr Arsic van Os. “We are using social media, business journals and their websites – all the available routes.”
Besides substituting energy intensive man-made material, it is also billing Accoya as an alternative option to hardwoods, notably tropical species, given its comparable durability and other technical qualities.
The immediate ambition for Accsys is to push towards utilising its two Accoya plants’ full capacity, with a target of achieving 100,000m3 annual production by the end of the 2027 financial year. Whether the new North American operation will lead to further international production expansion elsewhere is a question for the longer term.
“If we talk in two or three years’ time, I might give a different answer, but at the moment we will focus on what we already have – and there is scope for adding a further six reactors at Kingsport,” said Dr Arsic van Os. “It’s a very exciting time for the company. It represents a transformation for Accsys, and we intend to make the most of it. We believe we have a great product. With Accoya USA operational, Accsys is even more strongly placed to ensure customers and specifiers have a great experience using it.”
