Demand for wood-based panels has continued apace over the past 12 months, leading to some interesting dynamics in the industry.
“The market for all wood-based panels and supporting decorative materials has been very strong in the UK over the last year, in line with Europe in general,” said Bob Livesey, managing director at Egger UK. This, he said, was a result of good intrinsic demand but also due to some “significant planned and unforeseen production outages in Europe and also in the UK”.
Demand was still ahead of supply, he said, leading to some long lead times and short availability, particularly on commodity items. Chipboard is Egger’s main manufacturing activity in the UK but its imports of OSB and MDF from its other operations have increased marginally to support the fall in domestic availability.
“The MDF and OSB markets have been incredibly buoyant,” said Stuart Devoil at MEDITE SMARTPLY. “Like many other manufacturers in our market we have been swept along by the general high demand in the wood panels sector.
“Demand has outstripped supply considerably. And not just on standard products – specialist and technical categories have also seen considerable upswings. Even with MEDITE achieving record production volumes and taking into account significant investment to boost capacity and improve efficiency, we’ve still struggled to meet demand for our MDF and OSB products.”
Likewise, Finsa is working at full capacity at each of its mills, including at its second Superpan plant in Portugal, and has “limited availability in both chipboard and MDF”, according to Rafael Willisch, managing director at Finsa UK.
He added that the product experiencing the most growth was Superpan, which as well as finding new end uses, was also displacing some MDF applications.
For MEDITE SMARTPLY, OSB products aimed at specific trades, such as DRYBACKER for dryliners and SITEPROTECT for fencing and hoarding contractors, has opened up new markets for the company. It has also seen an upturn in interest in its SMARTPLY FR flame retardant boards.
On the MDF front, the construction sector remains key for MEDITE TRICOYA EXTREME and there is a growing awareness of the product in the landscape architecture, portable buildings and even public artworks arenas.
New Products
New products are in the pipeline for the majority of panel producers.
MEDITE SMARTPLY, for example, hints at “a number of exciting new products” currently being extensively researched to ensure they meet market requirements fully.
Meanwhile Egger promises several new design and texture developments within its Eggerzum presentation this year. “A catch-up of all the latest previous additions is now being promoted in our new Insight campaign, including hard copies and through our suite of digital tools,” said Mr Livesey.
Over at Finsa, two new ranges of decorative products are being launched exclusively for the UK market this year. The first is a special veneer range called Studio Natur, which will be launched in June. It features nine new veneers, including exotic species and tinted and fumed veneers.
The other launch, the date of which has yet to be announced, is a Superpan Décor range with 25 decors. These colours can be used to create combinations that follow the four trends of the company’s new ‘Trendbook’ for 2018/19. The Trendbook is a guide put together in collaboration with London trend agency Colour Hive.
Investment in manufacturing capacity and production efficiencies has also continued at an accelerated rate.
OSB investments
While Norbord continues to invest in its UK chipboard and MDF plants in line with its strategy of supplying a broad product mix to the construction sector, the big bucks have been spent on its new OSB line at its Inverness site. Norbord remains confident that demand for OSB will continue to grow, partly because of substitution of plywood.
The first boards rolled off the new line in September last year and production has been ramping up ever since.
“As with all plants it will take a number of years to realise the full capacity [nearly 640,000m3/year],” said Karl Morris, managing director of Norbord Europe.
The new line was built through several suppliers but the primary components are the continuous press from Dieffenbacher and the heat energy/drier from Buttner. The continuous press technology replaces the older platten presses at Inverness.
“This new line is state-of-the-art and will enable greater size and market flexibility,” said Mr Morris. “It will position Norbord Europe to meet rapidly growing demand for OSB in both the UK and across Europe.” Kronospan will also invest in OSB production in the UK at some point, and says plans for the development of a new OSB manufacturing facility are “at an advanced stage”.
The company has a £250m investment programme in the UK. Investments at Chirk will significantly increase available volumes, enhance product quality and support the development of new, innovative products, said a spokesperson.
To date, the Chirk MDF and chipboard manufacturing facilities have been upgraded, lamination equipment has been renewed and the log yard and onsite sawmill have undergone major efficiency improvements.
“Developments currently in progress are the installation of a new structural T&G profiling line, which will enable us to increase our volumes of T&G structural flooring,” said the spokesperson. “This will allow us to develop our position within the timber and builders merchant market and in UK housebuilding and construction.”
Egger has several projects planned for this year, primarily based on improving and upgrading the chipboard production lines at both its UK sites. Work in progress processes are also being enhanced at Hexham.
“These projects are expected to continue the improvement in efficiencies and reliability of production,” said Mr Livesey. Accounting for around 15% of group turnover, the UK business is a major player for Egger but it hasn’t held back on investments further afield. It recently announced a number of developments, including the acquisition of the Concordia plant in Argentina, the opening this year of a significant chipboard and melamine-faced production facility on a greenfield site in Poland, and also the building of a new plant in North Carolina in the US, which will be commissioned in 2019/2020.
MEDITE SMARTPLY’s investment in a new continuous press OSB line has had a significant impact on the business.
“Producing the highest quality board we’ve ever manufactured, teamed with greater flexibility in sizes and thicknesses has meant we can now operate in areas previously off limits to us,” said Mr Devoil. “New products such as OSB4 and panel sizes up to 7.5×2.5m mean we are now very much in demand in the offsite and factory-built sector, for example.” Investments are also ongoing at the company’s MEDITE plant in Clonmel.
“The investment into our Tricoya chip plant in Hull will bring significant additional demands and we are undertaking numerous upgrades in both our operational facilities and our organisational structure to accommodate this,” said Mr Devoil.
The new Tricoya wood element acetylation plant is on plan for completion in the summer of 2019 and initial capacity will be 40,000 tonnes of acetylated chips (equivalent to 30,000m3 of Tricoya panels). These chips will be transported to Clonmel for the production of MEDITE TRICOYA EXTREME.
They will also be shipped to Finsa in Spain as the company has recently signed a licence agreement with Tricoya Technologies Ltd for the production of Tricoya MDF. Under the agreement Finsa is granted exclusive rights for manufacturing Tricoya wood elements in Spain and Portugal, with non-exclusive distribution rights in other territories.
“Finsa is always looking for new opportunities to expand,” said Mr Willisch. “At present we are considering several business proposals in Europe (some in the UK) as well as in America.”
Panel manufacturers are a resilient bunch and as the date for the UK’s departure from the EU looms larger, their stoicism is plain to see.
“Norbord has predominantly UK-based assets but also has a significant production and market position in the eurozone,” said Karl Morris. “This represents a good balance with respect to the potential outcomes.”
“The UK remains a key part of our strategy,” said Stuart Devoil. “Whilst clearly we are planning for a number of scenarios relating to Brexit, our strategy remains to capitalise on our strong brand awareness and customer loyalty within the UK and Irish markets.
“We are trying to ensure we remain agile, so that we may rapidly flex our operations or activities to ensure we can respond to any changes that might befall us. Like many others, we are developing a small selection of scenarios, which are helping to develop our plans.”
