Summary
¦ Finsa started as a sawmill in 1931.
¦ Sales were €837m in 2010.
¦ The company is increasing its UK profile.
¦ SuperPan, GreenPanel, Compacmel and Fibracolour are newer Finsa value-added panel products.

Visiting Santiago de Compestela in north-west Spain is like taking a step back in history.

The city, the capital of the Celtic region of Galicia, is one of the three most sacred places in Catholicism due to its iconic, soaring cathedral being the reputed resting place of St James the apostle. Every year crowds of bustling pilgrims make their way along the Camino de Santiago – “The way of St James” – to the medieval city.

Amid this tourist hub and history is the headquarters for Spain’s (and one of the world’s) largest wood-based panel producers – Finsa, which has six plants in the province.

From its humble beginnings in 1931 as a sawmill near Santiago, Finsa has grown steadily, adding chipboard production in 1965; MDF, MFC and glue in the 1980s; veneered boards in the 1990s and other products since then.

Sales figures

The acquisition of outstanding shares in Spanish panel manufacturing joint venture Utisa two years ago increased the size of the company considerably and it now has operations in nine countries, 22 production plants and employs 4,319 people. Last year it sold 2.2 million m³ of products worth €837m (2009: 2 million m³; €824m), down from a 2007 peak of €1.2bn and 3.42 million m³.

The figures show Finsa’s performance improved last year but the reduction in sales and production output from the 2007 peak is symptomatic of the turbulent times affecting European panel manufacturing in recent years due to reduced demand, overcapacity, raw material and energy price increases and competition from biomass.

“In the last two years we have adjusted our production capacity in line with market demand and as a result we decommissioned some of our old production lines,” said Finsa UK managing director Rafael Willisch. “The result of this rationalisation was a reduction in the manufacture of products considered commodities with very low prices and negative margins,” he said.

Finsa has adopted Japanese Kaizen methodology to improve manufacturing, engineering, management processes, logistics, product development and marketing.

Value-added production and integrated processing have become more important, with a raft of new product developments, including lightweight and speciality boards such as SuperPan (woodchip core and MDF surfaces) and Greenpanel, consisting of MDF top and bottom surfaces and a thin MDF grid core.

At the expansive Santiago plant, the largest factory in the group at 2.2 million ft² and 700 staff, it’s easy to get an appreciation for this expansion into value-added products.

At one end of the spectrum there is manufacture of volume commodity chipboard panels on a 38.5m-long Siempelkamp ContiRoll press producing 6-40mm thick boards. Then there is the MFC operation, with six different presses, the latest a 2200-5800mm Siempelkamp unit installed five years ago and designed for very flexible operation.

Downstream processing

A short walk from these operations into another vast building reveals a huge downstream processing operation where the panels are cut to size on Holzma technology and then machined and edged into a variety of processed or semi-processed furniture components for the professional and DIY trades.

Products include edged panels, machined boards, postformed doors, worktops, kitchen carcases, and flat-pack furniture kits – produced on an army of Homag technology, including five edging lines with two- and four-sided capabilities. Profiline, Optimat and Weeke machines sit alongside Bargstedt handling technology.

Finsa also operates a full-blown sawmill on site, again with extensive downstream operations delivering solid wood products, some of which are available in the UK. Local maritime pine logs are sawn on a Ciris sawmill line, producing a range of sawn and treated products for the construction, garden and packaging sectors. Weinig machining centres process wood for applications including wine boxes, shuttering, cladding, decorative fencing, decking and planters. Even laminating is carried out for some products.

With this extent and scale of manufacturing capabilities, it’s perhaps surprising that the Finsa name has not had a greater prominence, especially in the UK, which is regarded as a strategic market by the company.

Brand awareness

This, Mr Willisch said, is something the company is looking to change with a new brand awareness drive.

Liverpool-based Finsa UK, operating since 1978, has been busy securing new distribution agreements, sponsored a design competition and attended the Ecobuild show in London. A new website is now up and running.

“In all these years we have moved from being a supplier of a limited range of commodity items to our position now as a leading manufacturer supplying the widest range of MDF in the market from 1.8-70mm,” said Mr Willisch.

Last year the lightweight range was launched in co-operation with distributors IDS, James Latham and Arnold Laver.

Three new products profiled in the furniture trade included Compacmel – an alternative to solid laminate and which is basically a fibreboard panel with a density of more than 1,000kg/m³, Fibracolor – through coloured MDF – and SuperPan Decor which is a product which Finsa has patented.

New products

“During 2011 we will launch new products which we are working on at present and we will increase our profile in the timber and furniture trade press with the presentation of our new website as well as a new agreement with leading distributors throughout the UK for the distribution of the new SuperPan Decor,” said Mr Willisch.

At Ecobuild it promoted the lightweight panels range and the stand featured the winning project of its design competition with the School of Architecture of the John Moores University, Liverpool – an illuminated staircase storage solution made from GreenPanel.

“Not many of our customers are aware of this but Finsa is a leading supplier of laminate flooring in the UK and we are very proud of being one of the top suppliers of B&Q and Howdens Joinery through our FAUS Floor brand,” said Mr Willisch.

“This part of our business has been strengthened lately with new personnel with the view of promoting our FAUS brand to many other customers in the UK. We are in the process of expanding the network of distributors throughout the UK.”

All this momentum feels significant for a private, family company which has kept a lower profile than many of its competitors over the years. Finsa still retains that family feel and the majority of the company’s shares are still owned by the original family, which takes an active interest in the business.

A short drive away from Santiago brings you to where it all began for Finsa – the site of the original 1930s sawmill at Padrón. Today there is no sawn timber production, but the site has grown massively to encompass an MDF and veneered board hub of some considerable scale on the banks of the River Ulla.

Finsa stopped cutting logs in the veneer mill a year ago. It now finds it more cost-effective to buy in the veneers and then classify them before cutting, gluing, edging and stitching them together on several Fisher+Ruckle machines. Three lines produce 25,000m³ of veneered board every year, with operations currently running at 60% capacity. Total group production is 150,000m³.

Veneers being applied during TTJ’s visit included sapele, European white oak, American white oak and wenge. Substrates include chipboard, MDF, plywood and blockboard.

Veneers are applied on a 130cm-wide press, before being cut to size and sanded on Egurko and Heeseman technology to create the Natur range of veneered boards. Boards at the Padrón factory are produced in 2-55mm thicknesses, though the Portuguese plant, a more flexible operation, can manufacture 250cm-wide boards.

The adjacent MDF plant, like the chipboard plant in Santiago, sources its raw material from the maritime pine and eucalyptus forests covering Galicia. About 80% of forests in the province are made up of these two species, which Finsa says gives it a better quality board than using spruce.

Lighter boards

Many of the newer Finsa MDF innovations focus on lighter boards, which consume less raw material, are easier to transport and are easier to handle.

FinLight, which consists of two thin Fibranor MDF faces (Fibranor) with a 300kg/m³ low-density MDF filling (Iberpan 300), was included in the resource efficiency category of the 2010 edition of the Construction Products Innovation and Achievement guide. Applications include interior doors, furniture, worktops, kitchen door fronts, screens and wall panelling.

SuperPan is effectively a new type of board in its combination of chipboard core and two MDF faces. It can also be used in engineered flooring, postforming and structural elements.

The GreenPanel ultralight board further reduces raw material use with its MDF top and bottom surfaces and thinner MDF grid core. It can be made in 28-100mm thicknesses, with a density as low as 160kg/m³ at 100mm. Suspended ceilings, partitions and furniture are typical end-use applications.

Other areas include its decorative paper business Decotec.

What is clear from visiting Finsa, is that the company is not putting all its eggs in one basket, but has created a broad product portfolio with an increasing emphasis on added value.