This summer at the British Wood Preserving and Damp-proofing Association‘s annual convention, the association’s president Mike Connell said that the timber and wood treatment industries needed to work together to meet the challenges of increasing regulation.
Otherwise, he said, alternative material suppliers would “rub their hands with glee”. Significantly, he added that the industry needed to embrace new processes and technologies to remain competitive.
These are challenging times for the timber protection industry, that is clear. With CCA-treated products facing an EC ban in residential areas, marine situations and for agricultural purposes, the focus is on the industry to come up with alternatives that can do a similar job.
And it is doing so. Pre-treaters are coming up with CCA-free, mainly copper-based treatments, while the transfer away from solvents to waterborne technology in the coatings industry is significant.
Switching to CCA-free
This year several large timber importers/merchants have gone over to CCA-free treatments.
Rowlinson Timber’s new facility at the Port of Grimsby uses an alkaline copper quaternary treatment; and Howarth Timber York is switching to Arch Timber Protection‘s Tanalith E formula. Osmose‘s Naturewood treatment was used for the first time in the UK by Brookridge Timber.
Another development was the world’s largest diameter low pressure treatment plant being installed at the Penzance factory of Baltic Pine, which claims to be the largest timber conservatory manufacturer in Europe. Designed by Osmose, the £600,000, 2m diameter, 10.5m-long plant has the capacity to treat the equivalent of 200 of Baltic Pine’s self-assembly conservatories per week, using Protim Solignum‘s Clearchoice treatment.
On the subject of coatings, Geoff Taylor, technical manager at Akzo Nobel Woodcare, presented a paper at the IWSc conference earlier this month, entitled ‘Coating Systems: an informed choice to drive Environmental Change’.
He says one of the main topics of discussion at the UK’s biggest coatings manufacturers is the EU white paper called ‘Strategy for a Future Chemicals Policy’ drafted in February last year and due to have a review next February.
Lobbying government
He was recently in Brussels, as part of a British Coatings Federation team lobbying MEPs about the issue because, if approved, he thinks it will take a lot of chemical ingredients away from wood coatings.
Mr Taylor believes in a more radical approach to the environmental issues. “We need to be making an informed choice on coating systems to know how we are going to affect our environment. I am encouraging the approach of using life cycle assessments.”
He says it is misleading to call a coating product environmentally-friendly if pigments are mined in South America, shipped to France, transported to Germany for manufacturing, then the product is shipped to the UK and transported around various parts of the country before it ends up in the hands of the customer.
“We have to look at the concept of the whole process, not just flogging the product. We have to consider the whole umbrella approach, life cycle assessment and the environment. It is looking at things a bit differently, being a bit more radical and looking at forestry issues.
“What’s happening to the coatings industry on the surface is, things look nice but behind the scenes a lot of radical changes are having to be made.”
Better product design
Peter Kaczmar, TRADA‘s coatings and treatments specialist, said: “The way things are going, with actives such as CCA, there is a better justification for the industry to look at a strategy and measures which obviate the need for preservatives. By that I mean thinking in terms of designing better products; systems for joinery which will not require the use of preservative treatment.”
He advocates better design as a way of protecting timber, such as making sure the overhangs of eaves are substantial. “These days there is a tendency to build homes with almost negligible eaves overhang.”
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“These are subtle changes, they are common sense measures. We need to help the product achieve a greater lifespan without blasting it with toxic chemical” |
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Peter Kaczmar, TRADA |
Measures can also be taken to prevent the influx of moisture to joinery end-grains, for example not stopping beads short during window production, while he says there is a case for alternative, more durable species being used.
“I am not talking large changes, these are subtle changes, they are common sense measures. We need to help the product achieve a greater lifespan without blasting it with toxic chemicals,” he added.
By applying better design, coupled with the use of safer, alternative wood preservatives everybody can achieve satisfaction – the customer, the treatment companies and those who sell timber.
He said treatment companies and coatings manufacturers will experience uncertainty until it is clear what type and quantities of chemicals are to be banned. “There is a certain inevitability about this. It was always bound to come and over the next few years there will be an increased pressure on active ingredients.”
Heat treatments
The Trä & Teknik/Elmia Timber trade show in Gothenburg in August showcased several alternatives to CCA treatment.
One area highlighted, which has been pioneered in Finland, is the use of heat treatment. This ‘wood modification’ process involves heating timber at very high temperatures to remove moisture and resin, changing its structure to increase durability to decay and adding stability.
Timber giants Finnforest and Stora Enso are investing heavily in this technology. The former is in the early stages of importing heat-
treated wood to the UK, albeit in very small quantities.
Finnforest UK Ltd’s industrial sales and new product manager Paul Maw said: “We are majoring on pine as a species and marketing the product as an external cladding mainly.”
Timber has already been sold through one of its key stockists Vincent Timber Ltd and has been used as a decorative rain screen in the Beehive retail centre in Cambridge, in tandem with a glulam structure. It has also been used as cladding on some houses and at a hospital in the south-west.
Finnforest has two heat treatment plants in Finland based on the Thermowood process – an industrial scale process developed by the Technical Research Centre of Finland together with industry.
“Timber cladding is very much in fashion at the moment and the traditional use of cedar and CCA-treated softwood have their own environmental problems. But the heat-treated timber has no chemical additives.
“I think it will find a niche in the market between treated softwood and cedar. There is a massive price differentiation between the two, and ThermoWood figures in between them.”
He says an added benefit of ThermoWood is the lack of resin, which means that resin bleed won’t cause further damage if a paint surface is broken.
Organisational change
A major organisational change coming soon will be the BWPDA splitting into two organisations from January 1, 2003. These will be the Property Care Association (for the remedial sector) and the Wood Protection Association (for pre-treaters), with both coming under the banner of the BWPDA.
The BWPDA also recently launched its Approved Treater Scheme, with treatment companies being assessed against criteria for quality treatment and environmental and safety protection. A total of 18 companies are so far on the register as approved treaters.
Meanwhile, the BWPDA’s Manual, last revised in 1999, has been updated and will be available early in 2003.
