Summary
• Decospan has capacity to make 20,000m² of panels a day.
• At full production it consumes 50,000m² of veneer daily.
• The company’s Idea Centre gives end users inspiration for using its products.
• Its Mecameubles factory ships veneered furniture components worldwide.
Posters around Decospan’s vast plant in Menen, Belgium, urge employees to put September 19 in their diaries. It’s the veneered board and component maker’s 30th anniversary and it clearly plans to mark it in a style befitting its development over the last three decades.
Looking at the company today, it is difficult to credit that its roots lie in the artisanal trade of flax making.
“My father Urbain started in the 1950s making flaxboard for doors,” explained managing director Jan Desmet. “It was the traditional local industry. In fact, the River Lys in Menen was called the ‘golden river’ due to all the flax that was lowered in to separate the fibres!”
After a number of years with a flaxboard business, Mr Desmet senior bought the division that did the veneering. That was 1979 and the rest, as they say, is history. In fact, Decospan’s story since then has been one of constant evolution until it now ranks as one of the best-known brands in the international decorative panel and furniture components market. It has further manufacturing sites in France and Croatia and sales offices across Europe – including Essex-based Decospan UK. And its products are exported worldwide for use in shopfitting, domestic and commercial interiors and a huge range of furniture and other applications.
Interior design
The company attributes its success to responsiveness to the fast-moving fashions of interior design and a willingness to “invest and innovate”. But equally important is the fact that, through all the changes, it has also stuck with one constant, described in its mission statement as “innovation and creative processing in veneer”.
“We’re making an ever-wider range of boards and components, using different base materials and our manufacturing approach has transformed, but everything we do is aimed at taking us deeper into veneered products,” said Mr Desmet. “If it doesn’t involve veneer, we’re not interested. It’s our red line and we emphasised that with our latest investment, a veneer splitting plant in Croatia.”
He acknowledged that synthetic decorative finishes have improved in recent years, notably in their ability to mimic timber, but Decospan has never been tempted to use them. It insists they still don’t capture the secret of the genuine article and latest market trends seem to show an increasing proportion of consumers agree.
“With growing environmental awareness and the fashion for natural products, people are returning to timber,” said Mr Desmet.
Careful selection
While sticking with wood may differentiate Decospan and give it a marketing advantage, it also, of course, brings with it the complexities of dealing with an unpredictable natural raw material.
”The key to any veneer business lies in the extraction of the right value from each flitch,” said Mr Desmet
That, he added, means Decospan selecting the right material at the outset, then grading at each stage of processing through to despatch under one of its three board qualities; Architectural, Classic or Commercial. This, in turn, puts the onus on maintaining the skills and knowledge of its workforce, from the three veneer buyers scouring the globe for supplies, to the 120 shopfloor staff.
“Everyone must understand the characteristics of our 150 main species,” said Mr Desmet. “It takes six months to train in grading, six months in splicing and then they’re handling veneer every day and still learning. So if we ever lose anybody, we¹re losing an expert.”
It’s also vital in today’s intensely competitive decorative panel market, says Decospan, to combine time-honoured veneer expertise with highly productive, large-scale manufacture. And it clearly does. In fact, what strikes the visitor to the Menen plant is its sheer size. It covers 35,000m², trucks drive inside to load up and staff use bikes to get around the site.
“Obviously we’re not at maximum output because of market conditions, but we have capacity to produce 20,000m² of panels every day,” said Mr Desmet. “That requires about 50,000m² of veneer.”
Lacquering and curing
The most industrial scale-aspects of the plant are undoubtedly the lacquering and curing lines.
“This is where we have to be most efficient and innovative as finished [veneered] panels offer melamine users the possibility to upgrade to real wood products, rather than something that looks like it,” said Mr Desmet.
Besides equipment to automate and boost productivity in other areas of manufacturing, like veneer edge-gluing and substrate bonding (and its automatic veneer presses can hold five whole boards at a time and bond them in minutes), Decospan has also introduced new technology in grading and selection. This, it says, augments the visual and manual skills of its workforce and is among its most bespoke equipment. One such machine, the Fischer+Ruckle grading unit, allows a single operator to despatch sheets of veneer to specific quality bins at the push of a button. Another, the ‘mix-match’ machine developed with Kuper, distributes different grain patterns evenly across the panel.
“This gives a more even-looking product,” said Mr Desmet. “And it ensures a consistent, matching appearance between batches.”
Engineered flooring
Helping maximise its veneer utilisation, Decospan can also direct material to its own further manufacturing arms, including its Par-ky engineered flooring business.
“When we launched Par-ky in the 90s people laughed and said no-one wants to walk on a 0.6mm veneer, it will just wear out,” said Mr Desmet. “But eventually we persuaded them that they’re walking on resilient lacquer, not the veneer and today we even export to China!”
Veneer from Menen also goes to Decospan’s furniture component operation Mecameubles. This 20,000m² plant, just over the French border, employs another 60 people and is also equipped with latest technology, such as Homag CNC machining centres which cut, drill and rout complex veneered components automatically.
“Mecameubles differs from Decospan in mainly supplying unfinished product,” said Mr Desmet. “It’s what the furniture makers still want.”
The company stresses that it is not a veneer merchant, but an additional product that helps make the most of its raw material, as well as being a success in its own right, is Decoflex. This paper-backed veneer is designed to shape split-free round the sharpest curves and is a big seller to furniture makers, shopfitters and boatbuilders.
Idea Centre
Another aspect of Decospan’s strategy to move still ‘deeper’ into veneered products has been to step up the creativity of its range. Some may feel that synthetic foils have taken a lead in this department, but the company believes veneers can more than compete. And it put down a clear marker of its ambitions on the designer end of the market with the 2006 launch of its Idea Centre, its “interface between natural resource and design”.
“In the Centre we display products in actual applications to show customers their potential and demonstrate innovative new uses,” said Mr Desmet.
Creative inspiration
Its latest product launches further underline this aim to take the design lead and offer creative inspiration. For instance, Shinnoki comprises 16 stained finishes that tie in with key interior design looks, while Character Wood, launched this year, is a collection of veneered panels and matching Decoflex that puts the stress on the grain. Both use ‘mix match’ to achieve a uniform visual effect.
Another recent launch is an even bigger break with tradition. Look a Like uses reconstituted wood veneer finishes, printed to imitate species from ash to zebrano.
“This further extends our design offer,” said Mr Desmet. “It’s genuine wood, but also suits customers who can’t handle the natural features of true veneer!”
In its high design product literature there’s also a big stress on the fact that end users and specifiers today can be creative with real wood veneer without environmental worries. A growing proportion of the Decospan range is FSC or PEFC chain of custody certified and suppliers are also signed up to its ‘Pure Wood Charter’, pledging to handle only wood from legal, well-managed sources.
“We also offer no-added formaldehyde options,” said Mr Desmet. “In fact, eventually we see the market demanding only certified, formaldehyde-free products.”
Surviving the recession
As for the future of Decospan generally, he acknowledged that market conditions in the short term look like remaining tough, including in the UK which accounts for about 12% of sales. But he’s optimistic that the commitment to “innovation and creative processing” in veneer that has driven the business forward for 30 years will bring it strongly through the downturn and leave it well placed to capitalise when conditions improve. In short, Decospan has a lot to celebrate on September 19.
“We can’t drift into the future on auto-pilot,” said Mr Desmet. “But I read recently that 50% of all manufactured products that will be in use in five years’ time, haven’t been invented yet. That offers Decospan great opportunities.”
