When customers said they wanted a squarer, straighter, atter, smoother OSB, SMARTPLY’s response was to invest €59m in a new continuous press.
The ¬ first boards rolled off the new line at SMARTPLY’s plant in Waterford, Ireland in April and the company is more than pleased with the enhanced product.
“We have now produced our straightest, attest, most consistent board ever and we are extremely proud of that,” said Stuart Devoil, MEDITE SMARTPLY’s head of marketing and brand.
This new board is made possible by the “most modern continuous OSB press in Europe.”
The investment included an entire new forming line, pressing and cut-to-size facility and an extension to the building. The old daylight press has been replaced by a 45m-long, 3m-wide continuous ContiRoll press from Siemplekamp. The forming line is 3.1m wide and has four forming ends – two surface and two core.
“The new forming line enables us to position the strands more precisely and more efficiently and that enables us to deliver the greatest tensile strength we can get out of the OSB board,” said Mr Devoil.
The new line also includes post-press thickness and blow detection to ensure the final material is within tolerance. Another key element in the new set-up – and to ensure the boards meet the strict straightness and size tolerances – is the master panel storage area where panels are cooled before stacking and being cut and packaged on the new equipment supplied by German machinery manufacturer Anthon.
“It enables us to ensure greater size consistency and tolerance. The storage also allows us to do some cut-to-size work even if the main line is not running. It provides a much more efficient process,” said Mr Devoil.
The new line also allows SMARTPLY to produce a wider range of panel sizes and thicknesses.
“The press runs pretty much continuously so at the click of a few buttons, with minimal waste, we can change the size,” said Mr Devoil.
This flexibility will also help with SMARTPLY’s planned expansion into European and wider markets where local building regulations will call for different product sizes.
So far the largest panel capable of being produced on the new line is 7.5m but the size is limited only by lorry capacity.
“If there were longer lorries, we could produce longer boards,” said Mr Devoil.
These larger boards open up new markets for SMARTPLY in longer spans for roofing and joists, and the smoother finish will also expand OSB’s markets.
“We’re getting a lot of interest from people wanting to use it as a decorative product in shops, offices and cafés where that industrial look is on trend,” said Mr Devoil.
SMARTPLY listened to its customers not only in terms of the product quality and sizes they wanted, but also how it was marked. As a result, as part of the new plant, SMARTPLY invested in new packaging, stencilling and board marking.
Ink jet stencilling to produce the outline of the MEDITE SMARTPLY logo on every pallet replaces sprayed full marking. “It makes it much clearer for our customers to understand,” said Mr Devoil.
Colour coding on the edge of the boards has also been removed because SMARTPLY felt the new, clearer packaging made it unnecessary and customers didn’t really understand it.
The overall result, according to customer feedback, is that the product looks a lot cleaner, fresher and is more easily identified.
“It fits with the modern ethos of such a progressive new manufacturing facility,” said Mr Devoil.
The change in marking has been timely, dovetailing nicely with the company’s rebranding from Coillte Panel Products to MEDITE SMARTPLY in May. This too, was in response to customers’ feedback.
“We asked our customers about the significance of the Coillte Panel Products name and they felt it didn’t align with the MEDITE and SMARTPLY brand names they knew,” said Mr Devoil.
So the company brought the two panel products brands together in the name, and in the new logo representing a tree.
“The new logo is a metaphor for our business,” said Mr Devoil. “The orange trunk represents OSB, which is structural; the green leaves and branches are the decorative elements, which is MDF.”
Customers have also been positive about this new identity. “People understand our business better and they understand who we are,” he said.
The installation of the new press and machinery went smoothly and the full commissioning in April was well ahead of the initial schedule.
The investment has “significantly” increased capacity and the extension to the building will allow capacity to be expanded again in future if required.
“We have the ability to add further capacity as it’s needed and as we enter new markets,” said Mr Devoil, adding that SMARTPLY will launch a range of new products before the end of the year.
This will include OSB4 which, with its greater structural strength, can be used for larger panels and longer spans.
The smoother boards offered by the new investment could also bring developments for the SITEPROTECT and SITEPROTECT PLUS coated site hoarding panels.
“At the moment we offer a pre-primed product but we’re looking at how we can apply coatings and graphics to produce something closer to a finished product,” said Mr Devoil.
In developing the product, he added, it was important to understand who the benefits were for. It may not be the people installing
the boarding, it may be the after trades or the CSR director of the development company.
SMARTPLY has also rebranded its OSB sheathing/vapour control/airtightness layer product VapAirTight to the more globally market-friendly PROPASSIV.
The panel is made from OSB3 coated with a vapour control coating. The new name also reflects SMARTPLY’s presence in the passive house market, reinforced further by PROPASSIV receiving certification from the Passive House Institute (PHI) as the world’s only airtight timber panel. In a passive house in Maidenhead in Berkshire it helped the completed home achieve 0.55 air changes per hours, better than the PHI’s requirement of 0.6.
Low energy housing may still account for only a small proportion of the new build housing market but interest in Propassiv is growing, especially now it has PHI certification. “We’re receiving pretty much an enquiry a day,” said Mr Devoil.
Now PROPASSIV is also being used in conjunction with MEDITE VENT, a breathable sheathing MDF.
“We’re now producing a guide to building a passive house,” said Mr Devoil, adding that it reflected SMARTPLY’s greater emphasis on speciality products.
“We’ve gone from having one board, to complete wall construction details with combinations of boards and other generic components,” he said. “Also, we will work with manufacturers in the structural insulated panels industry and timber engineering companies to produce bespoke panels engineered to their own criteria.”
This is all part of SMARTPLY’s strategy of being more specification driven and the upgraded factory enables it to deliver that strategy. That’s not to say that SMARTPLY’s standard products aren’t important, but value-added products will account for much of the increased capacity and extended global reach.
“This is ground breaking for us,” said Mr Devoil. “The new press has provided an opportunity for a new product, new branding and a new vision. It’s set us off in a new direction.”
