"Leading the way in wood protection" is the bold strapline in BASF Wolman’s new corporate branding and it used its symposium in Germany last month to demonstrate how it’s fulfilling this claim.
"It’s a big promise," vice-president and managing director Dr Ralf Schulz told delegates in Baden-Baden, "but we were the inventor of technical wood protection."
The new branding, launched to an audience of around 90 customer and business partners from 14 countries, follows the company’s name change from Dr Wolman GmbH to BASF Wolman GmbH earlier this year, which reinforces it is part of BASF, the world’s largest chemical company.
"With the rejuvenated Wolman brand we are moving even closer to our parent company BASF and at the same time we are clearly demonstrating with confidence who we are and what we stand for," said Dr Schulz.
And the new claim, he said, reflected Wolman’s scientific expertise and state-ofthe- art products.
"Wolman invests more than 5% of its turnover in R&D and 10% of staff are involved in R&D," he said, hinting that new products were in the pipeline. "We’ve been tweaking our products but now we want to produce ground breaking products."
One such development is the company’s AS Solution product and service package to minimise the risk of blue stain or mould on sawn timber. The package, which was introduced at the symposium, offers customers a site-specific solution which is adjusted according to risk.
"Normally a product is used in a fixed concentration over the whole season to cover all potential risks but a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cover everything," said Dr Hans-Peter Knoben. "Overdosing can create higher costs, and underdosing poses the risk of expensive claims."
Wolman collects data from the customer’s sawmill or treatment site, including storage, spore development, species and climatic conditions, and then adjusts the dosing level according to the risk rating. This will again vary depending on the time of year.
A pilot test at one site showed that to protect pine from blue stain, the required concentration of Wolman Sinesto varied from 1.7% to 3% over seven months, said Dr Knoben.
At a second site, the tests revealed that fungi infestations could be controlled by adding a "booster" to Sinesto and Wolsin during periods of high risk.
However, reducing the risk of mould in the first place required good handling practices, said Ernst-Werner Wormuth.
"Timber treatment increases the moisture content, which increases the risk of mould so you need good housekeeping and the correct treatment," he said.
First, it was important to avoid "preinfection". "If you have mould before treatment it increases the risk of mould afterwards," said Mr Wormuth.
He also warned against using infected stickers and emphasised the importance of separating out moulded timber to avoid the risk of spreading the infection. Good air circulation and rain protection, and the use of additives were also required.
BASF Wolman supported customers with spore sampling and mould testing, said Mr Wormuth. This involved identifying the mould fungi and testing them in different conditions.
BASF Wolman has also recently completed stage one of a four-stage plan to improve efficiencies on its site at Sinzheim, on the outskirts of Baden-Baden, which had grown gradually over the years.
The investment of "millions of euros" included improving the flow of lorry traffic by widening the site entrance, building a lorry park and installing a new weighbridge, which has also reduced the number of fork lift movements and so improved site safety.
A new production building, or tank farm, has also raised safety levels, product storage and throughput. Ten new 90,000 litre tanks have quadrupled tank storage and enabled the site to move from producing to order, to keeping stock.
"This means we can improve delivery times and reliability," said Dr Schulz.
The building also houses a new IBC filling unit which can fill 12 an hour, compared with six previously, and it can be operated by one person. The neighbouring IBC store area accommodates 1,200 containers on pallets on 15m-high racking. Around 45% of production is supplied to customers in IBCs, and the remaining 55% in tankers.
A new lorry-filling station has also improved efficiency, alleviating bottlenecks during the peak season. Calibrated mass flow meters provide accurate tanker filling, improving safety by reducing the risk of overfilling. This compared with the previous manual filling systems which had a tolerance of 20kg.
"We’ve improved the environmental health and safety of the site," said Dr Schulz. "We take this very seriously; it’s part of Wolman’s DNA and we try to transfer that to our customers as well."
As part of this, Wolman offers customers site safety audits and training. Sustainability was another message that Wolman promoted during the symposium. "Timber is a sustainable resource so it fits well with BASF’s strategy of "We create chemistry for a sustainable future," said Philipp Kley.
"Sustainability for us," he added, "starts with using the right products."
BASF was one of the 10 leading companies in the world publishing the environmental impact of its products throughout the supply chain and Mr Kley said that in 2013 BASF customers avoided 300 tonnes of CO2e emissions compared with using conventional non-BASF products.
EU legislation
Two European initiatives – the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) and the Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR) – will have a huge impact on the timber industry, BASF Wolman’s Wendelin Hettler said. The IED is intended to prevent or reduce industrial pollution, including air and water pollution, the production of waste, and energy consumption, noise emissions, and consumption of natural resources. It integrates seven directives, such as the IPPC, waste incineration and VOCs.
It also requires that an industrial site is returned to its original state once activities have ceased.
The IED became effective for new timber treatment installations in January 2013 and will apply to existing installations with a capacity to process at least 75m3 a day from July next year. These plants will require a permit, which is based on Best Available Techniques, which are not just guidance, but a legal framework.
As is often the case with EU directives, different countries have different interpretations of the IED, said Mr Hettler. For example, the UK is including dip tanks in the directive’s remit. These different interpretations provided a challenge in determining whether a treatment plant was within the IED’s scope.
The BPR, introduced in September last year, replaces the Biocidal Products Directive and will reduce the number of active ingredients used and the diversity of wood preservatives, said Mr Hettler.
Under the new regulation, articles can be treated only with biocidal products containing active substances approved in the EU and manufacturers or importers of treated articles are required to label the articles when a claim is made that the item has biocidal properties and when it’s required in the conditions of the approval of the active substance. Wood treated against sapstain and moulds are exempt from the labelling requirements.
"It protects Europe from imports with non-approved ingredients from outside Europe but the way it will work in practice is difficult to see," said Mr Hettler.
All national authorities had taken the opportunity to increase product authorisation fees from €10,000-45,000 to €10,000-70,000. Mutual recognition fees had also risen and, in order to sell a product in different countries, the fee had to paid in each country. There was also no requirement to relabel products in foreign languages.
"There are a lot of things that are not done well," said Mr Hettler. So far 36 active substances have been approved for use in wood preservatives.
DIY challenge
The DIY market is set to become an increasingly important sector for the timber industry, the symposium was told.
Alexander Lüring of Homburg & Partner, said that last year Europe’s DIY market had a turnover of €80bn and Germany, France and the UK accounted for 50% of that.
Over the next five years the DIY market would grow while specialised trade and general distribution would fall. Part of the DIY growth would be professional customers buying in DIY stores.
"In the building materials industry every third producer is working with DIY. Everyone in the wood industry needs to have an answer as to how to deal with DIY," he said. And this would present challenges as the DIY sector had the lowest margins, low price stability and a large number of price promotions.
Pricing was also an issue.
"They use cost-plus pricing," said Mr Lüring. "I haven’t found any DIY chains that know what customers are willing to pay. This means the pricing model has to be thought out thoroughly, and also, how do we deal with the bargaining power of DIY chains?" Logistics was another challenge, as DIY stores relied on just-in-time deliveries, said Mr Lüring.
