antique reproduction furniture and indonesia exporter

Frameless Lightweight Boards for Furniture Industry

Siempelkamp Handling System, a division of Siempelkamp Group, has developed a new manufacturing technology for the production of frameless lightweight boards, which offers numerous advantages, such as significant reduction of weight and raw materials use as well stability. The new technology uses manufacturing know-how from the production of panel-type wood-based materials and sandwich panels.
The key point of the new frameless lightweight board is the internal bond between the light core layer and he surface layers. Due to this bond achieved by using special glue and glue application, the large-sized panels show the properties of normal wood-based panels. Thanks to the special production technique, the board weight is considerably reduced. These lightweight boards are ideally suited for applications in the furniture industry and interior construction. Their reduced material usage minimizes production costs without compromising stability achieved by employing this composite material. SHS supplies complete plant components for the production of frameless lightweight boards that are based on the company’s standard programme. For instance, the boards are calibrated by means of a double-belt line that was developed by the PU technology department.
Special features of frameless lightweight panel :
- Weight reduction of up to 60 per cent
- Internal strength comparable to solid panels
-  Proven plant technology
- most reliable glue application technology
- compliance with thickness tolerances of furniture industry
- Numerous combination possibilities of surface and core materials
- Fully-automated production plants of up to 8 million square meters per annum with integrated cut-to-size technology
- Panel width of up to 2,500 mm (8 feet) with variable panel length

13. Europe’s panel industry going strong / home and garden
Wood based panel are alive and well throughout Europe, and one of the “adhesives” that gives this industrial sector its strength, resiliency and coherence is he European Panel Federation (EPF), which dispatched one of its officers, Managing Board Member Geoff Rhodes, to address at the international Wood Composites Symposium.
Mr. Rhodes, a veteran in the composites industry, is Marketing & Sales Director for Weyerhaeuser Products Ltd based in the United Kingdom. His theme at Seattle was the panel industry’s current outlook and future trends. A selection of the key points began with the news that Estonia, Lithuania and Poland have recently joined the EPF, bringing its total member nation to 23. Besides panel mills, there are around 50 associate members (mainly suppliers), along with some 40 collaborating technology institutes. EPF members last year turn out over 33 million cubic meters of particleboard, 13 million cubic meters of MDF and 3 million cubic meters of OSB. Where does the total output worth US$2.12 billion go? Furniture is number one and absorbs 54 per cent of he output, followed by construction (17 percent), millwork, etc (12 percent), panels (9 percent) and packaging/others (8 percent). Europe-wide (Russia excluded), particleboard was the 2005 king of the hill with 65 percent of wood based panels output, followed by MDF (19 percent), SB (6 percent), plywood (6 percent) and hardboard/soft board (4 percent).

No easy road for OSB
MDF’s market share has been growing gradually in recent years but has stabilized at 20 percent of the total share. OSB grew rapidly in pas decades but he current rate has dropped. Plywood is striving to compete with OSB but now sees a rough patch, with output stagnating due to increased import from other regions, while OSB faces tough competition from these imports.

Particleboard: Germany reigns supreme
The year 2005 was one of the best on record for particleboard output. Germany was the continent’s biggest producer with 9.5 million cubic meters, far ahead of France, Spain and Italy. Particleboard demand has weakened in Europe somewhat. Eastern Europe is increasing market share gradually, “an important aspect to the European particleboard scenario”.

MDF: A great hit
Over the past decade, MDF capacity grew vigorously, exceeding 14 million cubic metres a year. The driving force has been laminate flooring’s giant surge in demand. Capacity utilization for MDF ran at 91 percent last year and should hit 94 percent in 2006.

OSB: New kid on the block
Newer than particleboard and MDF, OSB is a steady climber and has exceeded the 3 million-cubic metre capacity notch. Production rises year after year, averaging 14 percent. Exports are healthy, too, with about 25 percent going outside Europe, a better relative performance than the other main Euro-panels.

Are the worries? Yes
Production costs, which rose sharply last year due to soaring oil process effect on transport, energy and resin, is concern. Wood prices were up, too, but with wide variance by country. “The availability of wood as a raw material for the panel production worries the industry to an increasing extent,” he said. “This is due to the increased support from the authorities to the burning of wood for the production of so-called ‘green energy’. Consequently, wood costs are estimated to be set for a long-term increase. Since EPF doesn’t want to fight windmills against this ‘renewable energy wave’, we have decided to establish an action programme with the aim to build a positive information wave about wood products to counterbalance it.”