Ante-holz, one of the “big” German mills with a history of exporting to the UK, has recently completed a substantial investment in new production facilities.
The central Germany-based company has spent about €50m building a fourth mill in Rottleberode, Saxony-Anhalt.
It has two other mills in Germany – one at its headquarters in Bromskirchen-Somplar, Hessen, and another in Winterberg-Züschen, Nordrhein-Westfalen, while a mill in Kozuchów, Poland focuses on garden timber products.
The company, founded in 1927, now has a total production of 1.8 million m³, putting it firmly in the “very large” category of European sawmills.
The new Rottleberode mill, situated on a 40ha site off the A38 motorway, has an annual sawing capacity of 800,000m³.
The KVH production facility was the first to open on the site last autumn in order to meet the anticipated strong demand for the product within Europe. The facility has a KVH capacity of 200,000m³, bringing the company’s total KVH capacity up to 350,000m³. The sawmill opened in January and there are plans to add planing facilities.
At Rottleberode there is also a log yard, a biomass heat and power plant, kiln-drying chambers and a railway siding.
Ante-holz started trading with the UK more than 10 years ago, when it was mainly selling glulam and garden timber products.
Over the past few years, the product portfolio has been steadily expanded, with a full range of sawn spruce products, including rough-sawn, planed, dried and machine strength graded timber.
This year ante-holz will supply about 60,000m³ to the?UK, meeting relevant certification standards, including PEFC certification and C24 grading. Earlier investments included a new €11m planing line at Somplar in 2005, speeding up planing operations to 480m per minute.
The company will once again have a presence at this year’s Interbuild show at Birmingham NEC, where it will highlight KVH.
