The new International Standard for Phytosanitary Measures 15 has provided a challenge for the timber industry worldwide but James Cordiner & Son Ltd says it is turning the challenge into an opportunity.
The Scottish timber merchant has just installed a state-of-the-art kiln which runs both drying and heat treatment cycles and has been accredited in accordance with ISPM 15.
The new standard, required to counter the international spread of plant pests, requires export wood packaging materials, including pallets, to be heat treated to a minimum core temperature of 56 degrees C for a minimum of 30 minutes. The standard is being adopted internationally this year.
Cordiners’ new kiln is situated at its Silverbank Sawmills in Banchory, Aberdeenshire, which produces material for the company’s pallet factory in Aberdeen. It also carries out contract drying.
Cordiners has not been involved in kilning for some time, but joint managing director Jimmy Cordiner said the company knew that its customers would be requiring heat treated timber and that action had to be taken.
With only 25 companies accredited by the Forestry Commission to carry out heat treatment to the new standard, its head of plant health Roddie Burgess said there would be a shortfall in capacity. This, he maintained, represents a “fantastic opportunity” for timber processors.
It is a point that is not lost on Mr Cordiner. “It is our hope to gain new customers through this,” he said, adding that the service would also meet the needs of existing customers.
Cordiners’ move is also significant as the first UK installation of a heat treatment and drying kiln from Italian manufacturer Termolegno. And it was an installation that Steve Williams, director of UK agent River Dee Machinery, said went without a hitch.”The whole thing went very smoothly,” he said. “Delivery through to getting it up and running and the heat treatment verification tests was all done in two weeks.”
Termolegno now has two more UK installations going in over the next two months.
Fully automatic
Cordiners’ oil-fired kiln has a 45m3 capacity and both the heat treatment and drying – which can be run individually or on a combined cycle – are fully automatic.
The kiln operates on a 90 degrees C hot water boiler system and is fully computer controlled. Operated through a PC, it can be programmed for a range of dimensions and species.
“There is a full graphic readout for all sensors for both core temperature, core moisture content and humidity inside the kiln,” said Mr Williams.
The heat treatment cycle in the Termolegno system takes around four or five hours, depending on the temperature of the wood when loaded. At Cordiners, one cycle took only 4.5 hours even when the packs of timber were just above freezing when they went into the kiln.
