The heat is on as two products encroach on territory that plywood once regarded as its own. Exterior MDF and OSB are in relentless pursuit of market share and year on year the gap is narrowing.
Exterior MDF production in the UK is just a fraction of exterior plywood, which amounts to around 500,000m3 a year. But its use is growing with plywood under pressure on both price and environmental issues.
In 2003, for the first time in five years, the UK’s imports of plywood fell, by 3%. This year a further drop is forecast, especially for tropical plywoods. Judged by their indifferent start to the year, a drop is also likely in the import of coniferous plywoods.
Plywood price rises have undoubtedly had an impact upon demand, as have freight costs and availability. But in these days of corporate social responsibility, pressures on large consumers have increased significantly with the desire to ensure certified environmental credentials and legal origins of products.
Considerable volumes of plywood continue to be imported into the UK. For many applications it provides a perfectly accomplished material – but so does exterior MDF. And as a comparative youngster in the market, its merits are gaining recognition.
Medite Exterior MDF, produced by Weyerhaeuser, has for years been marketed as much for its creative contribution as for its physical virtues.
Third-party certified
The product is also independently third party certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, giving it an edge increasingly recognised by a growing number of specifiers, builders and woodworking manufacturers specialising in exterior joinery. Just like any other MDF, the exterior version has smooth surfaces ideal for painting, it can be precisely cut and carved without splintering or breakout, has excellent screwholding and with adequate coating protection remains a stable product that repels all kinds of weather.
The exterior qualities are present all through the panel, enabling all kinds of building elements to be produced.
Medite Exterior has been used successfully for weatherboarding, as pre-machined cladding for garden offices, as non-jointed glazing beads, complete shopfronts and shopfront elements, porticos and signage. It has also been used for balcony and roof panels, garden planters, conservatories, fascias, doors, advertising hoardings, sports score boards, sight screens and many other applications.
Medite Exterior carries the manufacturers guarantee of 10 years service and some of these applications are still going strong after more than 15 years.
Meanwhile in the UK marketplace, OSB has also been making incursions into territory traditionally occupied by plywood – and to a lesser extent other wood-based materials.
Consumption is estimated to have risen by some 50% in the last five years and this progress appears set to continue with leading industry experts predicting annual double-digit percentage increases in UK consumption for at least the next 10 years.
The significantly higher prices attracted by OSB this year have led to instances of reverse substitution, and growth has slowed as a result. Nevertheless, the consumption trend remains relentlessly upwards. Wood-based panel products manufacturer Norbord, the only company to be producing OSB in Britain (at its Inverness factory), expects average European consumption growth of 12-14% to be maintained year on year over the next decade.
OSB’s qualities have recommended themselves to a variety of end-users, including the burgeoning timber frame housing sector. A Norbord spokesperson said: “Many major housebuilders have decided that timber frame is the way forward, with ever-stricter thermal insulation standards being a key driver.” New maximum U values in walls are achievable with masonry construction, “but it’s a much simpler task if you use a hollow framed wall system and because the bulk of the insulation can be fitted within the timber wall, you can build the walls up to 75mm thinner”.
Norbord OSB product manager George Wilson said use of Canadian pine plywood dominated Scotland’s timber frame housing until the mid-1980s when Norbord established OSB production in Inverness. Now housing producers are increasingly using OSB within their manufacturing systems because it offers “a consistency of product, regularity of sizes, and availability of mixed sizes”.
OSB also conforms to those standards and directives that are relevant to key timber frame housing customers. Mr Wilson said: “FSC accreditation is particularly pertinent in social housing, which is an important market for timber frame. We also offer BBA certification on OSB, which effectively means it is fit for purpose for a minimum of 60 years.”
Timber frame has long enjoyed a substantial share of the housing market in Scotland with more limited penetration throughout the rest of Britain. However, development of new timber frame production capacity south of the border is believed to offer massive additional scope for consumption of OSB in closed wall systems and flooring.
Growth in other areas of OSB consumption is perhaps even more impressive. These include general construction, such as flat roofing, floors and roofs for garden sheds, portable buildings and park homes; upholstered furniture; and in packaging with, for example, pallets and as a replacement for solid timber in box sides.
Mr Wilson said that builders and other industry professionals are becoming “more and more aware of what they are using in structural applications from an environmental perspective” and that, hence, OSB’s green credentials represents something of a salesman’s dream. He added that the Inverness factory uses native Scots pine to produce its OSB, thereby eliminating the need to import wood from distant parts of the world. The use of locally grown timber has been made increasingly attractive, he added, by the “growing costs of global haulage”.
Environmental criteria
SmartPly Europe sales and marketing director Andrew Macdonald agreed that builders and other industrial buyers are placing increasing emphasis on environmental considerations. By way of example he noted the positive customer response to his company’s OSB3 product, which has no added formaldehyde. He also pointed out that due to the domestic availability of OSB, consumers do not have to suffer some of the “vagaries of importation”, such as exchange rate fluctuations and shipping problems.
Although OSB consumption growth is – and is likely to remain – impressive, it is doubtful whether this will lead to the development of major new production capacity in the UK over the short term. According to the European Panel Federation, the Norbord plant at Inverness had a production capacity of around 320,000m3 per year at the end of 2003 and “still has a margin before reaching full capacity”.
Mr Macdonald suggests that, from the European perspective, OSB capacity developments are likely to be focused in the near term on regions where production costs are lower and housebuilding growth
is more pronounced. At the same time, he said he believes OSB has the scope “to substitute up to two-thirds of plywood consumption in Europe as a whole”.
