New plant started up for Siempelkamp, the German woodworking plant specialist. The Chinese manufacturer Jiangsu Huidian New Materials has commissioned the new “U-flaker” produced by Siempelkamp at its Shuyang site. This is the group’s third solution, a plant made for the production of ‘hybrid’ panels, installed in China; two others are in operation at plants in Guangxi and Shandong. The special panels combine – Siempelkamp explained – a core layer made of long, particularly thin flakes with a surface layer of thin chipboard. Panels made from these flakes are characterised by good flexural strength, and also reduce the weight of the board by up to 10-15 percent. Glue consumption and installed electrical power are also reduced compared to the classic two-stage process.
THE PROCESS
This process enables the use of logs with a diameter of less than 80 millimetres and other wood assortments that would otherwise not be suitable for other direct flaking processes. Thanks to the flaking of knife shafts, it is possible to produce excellent wood veneer from almost any source material. Shuyang’s U-flaker can therefore be used with almost any type of raw material, such as logs, slabs and cores from the veneer peeling process. The fact that it is also possible to process locally available wood that is not associated with long transport routes also makes the production of boards using these methods particularly environmentally friendly. “Both the product properties and the resource efficiency of our concept are convincing in the market; the large savings in raw materials alone contribute significantly to the competitiveness of our boards in price-sensitive markets,” said Marc Müller, head of Siempelkamp commercial sales.
