MDF Expansion continues

In this, the first part of our annual survey of the global MDF producing industry, we look at the MDF mills and their capacities in Europe and North America in 2020 and at the prospects for the industry generally. The current dynamics issues and realities of 2020 and 2021 linked to the Covid-19 pandemic are not specifically considered in this particular piece of work.

In 2020 and looking at Europe first, it was generally a positive year for MDF manufacturers, with most companies focused on dealing with the impact of the pandemic and although consumption fell for a while in both the furniture and construction sectors, a V-shaped recovery was experienced as the year progressed and concluded.

The news of all upcoming new European MDF mills is listed in Table 1, European capacity development for 2021 and beyond. Included are the major investments by Yildiz Entegre of Turkey overseas in Vladimir, Russia and in Turkey, the investments by Camsan at Ordu and Starwood at Inegol. Also, in Russia we list the Kronospan MDF development at Lydinovo, the LLC Luzales MDF investment in Syuktvkar and we also show Germany’s fibreboard maker Homanit, which unveiled plans to invest some €115m in constructing a new MDF production facility for the company at Pagirai near Vilnius, in Lithuania.

Building on last year’s report, the CalPlant 1 (formerly known as CalAg) project rice straw-based medium density fibreboard plant in California became a production reality, albeit slowly, with an initial start-up in November 2020, so this plant is moved to the main listing.

In Canada, the MDF business and markets remained steady and in Mexico, the positive capacity developments outlined previously progressed well. The South America-based wood-based panel giant Arauco is now running the former Masisa’s MDF facility in Durango and Proteak Uno (Pro MDF) has been renamed Technotable, in Huimanguillo. 

This year’s survey once again provides listings of design capacity in the two regions as at the end of 2020. We also show the changes expected to capacity during 2021 and beyond.

Total all-European installed capacity reached 28,931,000m3 in 2020, compared with 28,606,000m3 in 2019, with growth seen across Bulgaria, Russia, and Turkey.

MDF mills continue to work hard to optimise their installations and look for continual production refinements and, as always, new product developments to maximise the opportunities that exist within their individual facilities.

This survey continues to be published in two parts; the second part will deal with the rest of the world outside Europe and North America and will be published in the August- September 2021 issue of WBPI.

The author and the editor of WBPI, remain grateful to all those organisations and manufacturers as well as other industry professionals, who made valued contributions to help us build this narrative. We are always pleased to receive new information regarding design capacity changes at any time during the year, whenever it is most convenient.

EUROPEAN CAPACITY

Significantly, ongoing investments in Turkey continue. For its second production plant near Inegöl, Starwood, the Turkish wood-based materials manufacturer, ordered its second thin-board plant to produce thin MDF/HDF boards with a capacity of 320,000m3. This is the fifth time that Starwood has chosen to use Siempelkamp's ContiRoll press technology and a Siempelkamp plant. The new high-performance thin board plant is being built at Starwood's second site near Inegöl, which has so far been used for wood chip production. It supplements the capacity of 750-800m³/day currently being produced on the first 7ft line. The new 8ft line is designed for a capacity of an additional 1,000m³/ day with board thicknesses of 2.7-3mm. Their thickness ranges from 1.5-6mm. It is therefore geared to the production of thin and ultra-thin boards, but can also be used in furniture board production for MDF and L-MDF up to 22mm.

Very thin MDF boards are increasingly being used, for example, as furniture back panels, top layers of doors or drawer bottoms. Thin MDF can only be produced economically with very fast-running plants.The new plant for Starwood is therefore designed to run at 2,000mm/s.

The core of the scope of supply is the press line – the 9th-generation ContiRoll continuous press in the 8ft x 28.8m format.

Besides the flexible infeed, the press is specially equipped with a hydraulic concept developed for thin and ultra-thin board production and a lightweight board package for furniture board production.

"Starwood is one of the thin panel specialists in our industry, always opening its doors to visitors from all over the world and is considered a trendsetter with its thin board line 1,” said Ulrich Kaiser, sales manager for wood-based material plants at Siempelkamp.

“Many other customers worldwide have therefore followed this philosophy and our overall concept for thin board production and have chosen Siempelkamp technology.”

In addition to the press technology, the spreading technology relied on is Siempelkamp’s "Starformer", which has been further developed especially for thin board and a fibre dryer from Siempelkamp's subsidiary Büttner, as well as the glue dosing system including Ecoresinator.

With this plant, the installed base at Starwood supplied by Siempelkamp increases to five ContiRolls – two for particleboard production and three for MDF production. The project also represents another milestone in the co-operation with the GIM Export Group, an important connection for Siempelkamp to the Turkish market. The current order represents the 30th new plant to be realised jointly by Siempelkamp and the Göttingen-based company.

Assembly will start in mid-2021, with the first board planned for the end of 2021.

As an additional update and with Camsan Ordu’s current project and installation of a new complete MDF plant with a capacity of 320,000m3 and the prospect of Turkey continuing as a growing market for wood-based panel plants, Dieffenbacher sought to strengthen its business activities in Turkey by appointing Isik Zorcu as project manager in a newly established Dieffenbacher Liaison Office Turkey. Mr Zorcu is well known in the Turkish wood-based panels industry.

We previously reported that the 585,000m3 Yildiz Sunta 2 MDF lines in Izmit, Turkey stopped working back in 2019 and the facility was subsequently temporarily closed, having had to apply for bankruptcy procedures. However, the company has now been purchased by Yildiz Entegre, a transaction that has been approved by the Turkish competition authorities and this facility now remains within the main listing.

Included within our 2021 and beyond future capacity table is Germany’s Homanit, which is to boost its manufacturing presence in the Baltic states by investing in Lithuania.

Homann Holzwerkstoffe is producing MDF successfully in Poland and is now investing €115m in constructing a brand new MDF production facility in Lithuania.

Operating plants in Losheim am See, Germany, and in the Polish cities of Karlino and Krosno Odrzanskie, the Homanit Group is a European specialist in the production of thin, high-value-added wood fibreboards. For its new site in Pagirai near the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, the company has ordered a complete low-emissions THDF plant from Dieffenbacher.

Dieffenbacher will supply all components, from debarking to stacking. The plant will deploy the latest environmental technology solutions in combination with the fibre dryer and a 50MW energy plant, ensuring that emissions are minimised.

“Dieffenbacher has supported us with full commitment in our efforts to operate our new plant with the lowest possible emissions,” said Homanit managing director Ernst Keider.

The core of the plant features a stateof- the-art thin board forming and press line based on a CPS+ continuous press and a Dieffenbacher PROjet gluing system. Dieffenbacher is responsible for the automation of the new line.

The THDF plant is designed to keep emissions to a minimum while producing 1.5mm to 22mm thick MDF of high quality. A production volume of 310,000m³ per year is planned, corresponding roughly to a daily capacity of 950m³.

Assembly is scheduled to start in the autumn of 2021, with plant start-up to take place in the summer of 2022.

The new Lithuanian facility should expand Homanit’s foothold in the three Baltic states, but also allow the manufacturer to export a larger share of the group’s production beyond Europe.

Commenting on the holding company’s plans, Fritz Homann, the managing director of Homann Holzwerkstoffe, said the group had “strong free cash flow for further international expansions”, for which Lithuania provided “a good and realistic basis”.

In the last year we added the Romanian MDF plant from Yildiz Entegre to our main listing. The plant, which was built in the Pitesti / Oarja Region of Romania, has a production capacity of 460,000m3 and is successfully producing MDF, melamine faced MDF, laminate flooring and MDF doors.

Products produced in this facility, which has a production capacity of nearly 15 million m2 of laminate flooring and 30,000 doors per month, are exported to many countries in Europe and Africa.

Just for information, Kastamonu Entegre also operates a 115,000m3 fibreboard door skin plant at Reghin, Romania producing 3.2mm moulded panels, but this is not included in the main MDF capacity listing, as moulded door skin production in all other countries is not included in this survey documentation and statistical analysis.

Also added to the main listing now is the Bulgarian Kronospan MDF facility with its 265,000m3 capacity in Veliko Tarnova, which is up and running and on the same site where the company is producing both particleboard and MFC, for the local furniture related manufacturing cluster.

The Austrian wood-based panels manufacturer is now reported to be expanding its whole production facilities in this northern Bulgarian city. Apart from adding further particleboard investment it has now started the production of MDF, which had previously never been made in Bulgaria.

An investment plan worth BGN300m has already been launched by the company, which also plans to create a zone where furniture manufacturers using panels made by Kronospan will also be able to set up production sites. Kronospan runs two PB plants in Bulgaria, one in Veliko Tarnovo and another in Burgas, giving employment to some 400 people. The expansion is expected to add 100 jobs and may create hundreds more in affiliated industries.

Italy continues to be caught up in the challenges caused by the long-term ongoing decline in furniture production locally, coupled with the construction sector’s reduction in activity, but recently with the creation of home offices and strong DIY demand, shortages of MDF products are reported. Bipan (Luigi Frati) and Plaxil (Fantoni) remain the two long-term domestic MDF brands and producers.

We can report that Fantoni’s Osoppo €60m MDF investment in Italy, has progressed well and is fully operational. The project there reflects the company’s long-term solid commitment to the MDF sector, both as a pioneer and as an innovator.

Looking ahead, the trend in Italy towards utilising increasing percentages of recycled wood raw materials continues and using technologies now commonly seen in the plastic recycling sector, the wood industry is utilising these (optical scanners for instance) and benefitting accordingly.

Looking elsewhere in Europe now, from Austria, the acquisition by Egger of the Masisa MDF plant in Concordia, Argentina, from the Chilean Masisa SA, has consolidated. This was the first time this wood-based material manufacturer is represented with a production site outside Europe. Headquartered in St Johann in Tirol, Austria, the company is consistently still pursuing its strategy of continuing to grow on its own terms and to make itself future proof through increasing internationalisation.

In France, the MDF market has remained stable, with growth reported in the trade related sector and with shortages of MDF reported. It has been noted that the market for thin MDF was particularly strong in 2020 as vinyl flooring appears to be poor in some technical resistance properties and HDF-based laminate flooring is apparently coming back in force.

Kronospan has consolidated its investments in France and the privately owned Panneaux de Corrèze continues to develop its added value MDF offering successfully and is looking at further investments in 2021, to increase capacity by around 10%.

In contrast, the Finsa-owned Mediland MDF facility in the south-western French town of Morcenx in the Landes region announced the intention to close and ceased production at the end of 2020 because the 30+ year-old mill with a multi-opening press was not competitive and wood costs in the Landes region were too high. These problems apparently were also exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis.

Before Finsa, the 150,000m3 mill was previously owned by Willamette Industries and then Weyerhaeuser Co.

Whilst MDF production will cease at the site, the Morcenx facility is to become a strategic distribution point in France for Finsa’s wood-based panel products coming from Spain.

In Spain and Portugal investment in new technology continues and Finsa is to install Dieffenbacher glue-saving technology in two production lines in Nelas, Portugal.

Two PROjet systems will help reduce glue consumption in MDF production. Another PROjet and an EVOjet P will be used in a line that produces boards with a particleboard core layer covered top and bottom by MDF surface layers. The PROjet will be used in surface-layer gluing, whereas the EVOjet P will be deployed for the core layer.

Installation and start-up of the four Dieffenbacher glue-saving systems are scheduled for late summer.

Meanwhile, Kronospan has emerged in recent years as a powerful player in the Iberian Peninsula and it now competes seriously, with the long established and locally based groups. One of the company’s goals remains to increase its market share in Spain and Portugal by 20%-30% whilst still consolidating its export markets.

In Germany and in the Benelux, the MDF markets remained strong but the fact remains that HDF as a substrate for laminate flooring had been losing volume as fashions change in western Europe although in eastern Europe, Russia and Turkey, this product is clearly still growing in popularity. However, the trend towards thin vinyl flooring (PVC) styles has also brought some scrutiny as to the technical performance of this vinyl product.

Plant modernisations are becoming more important for wood-based panel producers worldwide. Eppingen-based machine and plant manufacturer Dieffenbacher is collaborating with customers on innovative modernisation solutions that can help MDF producers keep their plants competitive far into the future.

One recent example is the retrofitting of a steam pre-heater at Pfleiderer’s MDF plant in Baruth, Brandenburg, Germany. The companies’ collaboration led to Dieffenbacher’s EVOsteam technology evolution. Installed directly at the press infeed, the EVOsteam preheats the mat by injecting steam. This reduces the time needed to heat the mat inside the press, accelerating production. Another forming station conversion is under way for Pfleiderer at its Grajewo site in north-eastern Poland, where it produces MDF and particleboard.

In the UK and Ireland, there were no new capacity investments or change from the three main MDF players Norbord, Kronospan and Medite (Coillte) and all had strong order books in 2020.

But a change in corporate ownership has evolved with Norbord being acquired by West Fraser of Canada in an all-stock deal worth US$4bn. The closing of this transaction was in February 2021.

“The opportunity to acquire a world-class leader in production of low-cost, high-margin products is a perfect complement to our product portfolio,” West Fraser president and CEO Raymond Ferris said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg.

“It really lays the groundwork for us to be just a complete supplier to our customers.”

Mr Ferris added the acquisition provides the company with an opportunity to enter the European market.

“Norbord’s had a very successful strategy and a good growing footprint in the UK and Europe, and we’re excited to be a part of that,” he said. “We do think that that’s an area for further potential.”

Mr Ferris continues as West Fraser's chief executive, while Norbord's Peter Wijnbergen has been appointed president of engineered wood, and responsible for the company's OSB, plywood, particleboard, MDF and veneer operations.

Medite (Coillte) continues to pioneer, develop, and bring to market a variety of new and added value products. With the intriguing fibre modified Medite Tricoya Extreme Durable MDF for external use, the company is making further interesting market penetration, competing in many cases with non-wood elements, particularly in the construction sector.

Accsys Technologies Group announced in November 2020 that the construction process of the world’s first Tricoya plant in Hull, UK had seen the nine-storey acetylation tower ascend to full height.

The company, which uses wood modification technology to create high performance, sustainable wood building products, says the plant will have a 30,000 tonnes per year Tricoya acetylated wood chip capacity.

MDF panels made from Tricoya wood chips by Accsys' customers can be used in situations and environments that are completely unsuitable for traditional MDF panels, such as exterior applications.

Accsys currently manufactures Accoya acetylated solid wood at its facility in Arnhem, the Netherlands, and produces Tricoya elements by processing Accoya. The Hull plant will add the equivalent of over 60% of Accsys' current total production capacity, as well as marking the company's progress into a multi-site production operation. It forms a part of the business' ambitious growth strategy that is targeting 200,000m3 per year production capacity by 2025 (FY2020: 60,000m3 per year), including the expansion of the Arnhem facility and plans for new plants in the US and Malaysia.

Accsys also has a Tricoya user licence agreement with Finsa to produce Tricoya modified wood-based panels. The agreement is a breakthrough for Accsys, with Finsa set to become the second producer of Tricoya panels. Ireland-based Medite is, of course, the other existing producer.

Under the agreement, Finsa is granted exclusive rights for manufacturing Tricoya panels in Spain and Portugal, with nonexclusive distribution rights in other territories.

In the Nordic region (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland) there are no production facilities for MDF, but the influence of the well-known Swedish furniture group, in terms of global design trends in the competitively priced self-assembly sector, remains influential and interesting. We understand that MDF will still generally be used where very high-quality core and faces allow detailed machining and high-quality finishing, but weight issues continue to dominate selection of materials. For certain components, MDF with a density of less than 500kg/m3, whilst maintaining high quality, is finding favour alongside higher density items of 700kg/m3+, for special use. Also, products produced as sandwich elements (core honeycomb with surface 2.5mm or less HDF) are helpful when weight issues need to be addressed in the final furniture product and recycling of products has becomes ever more important within the circular economy.

In fact, the issue of recycling MDF at the end of use remains an important topic of research in Scandinavia and elsewhere and the wood sector will benefit commercially and technically from new recycling methodology, currently being developed by other industries, and as mentioned in the comments on Italy. This is all evolving in different places and with varying pace with interesting pioneering developments still being seen at MDF Recovery Ltd in the UK.

Trends in furniture production from the Baltic states, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania were all reported to be up in 2020.

For Russia, newsletter Euwid and WBPI’s Russia correspondent Eugene Gerden have both reported interesting developments. The MDF/HDF investment at Vladimir (capacity 424,000m3) by the Turkish wood-based panel and laminate flooring manufacturer Yildiz Entegre Agac Sanayi Ve Ticaret AS, headquartered in Kocaeli, is continuing and may be operational later in 2021. Also added to our future capacity table is Kronospan’s MDF investment in the city of Lydinovo in the Kaluga region with a planned capacity of 350,000m3 and start up by the end of this year. Also, LLC Luzales has been constructing an MDF facility near the city of Syktyvkar in Russia and the new plant is expected to be commissioned by the end of 2021 with a planned capacity of 270,000m3.

So, looking ahead for expanded and new capacity in 2021 and beyond in Europe as whole, we have the lines mentioned in Russia at Vladimir (424,000m3) by the Turkish wood-based panel company Yildiz Entegre, Kronospan at Lydinovo (350,000m3) and LLC Luzales at Syktyvkar (270,000m3). Add to these the MDF investment from Homanit (310,000m3) in Lithuania and in Turkey, Camsan at Ordu (320,000m3) and Starwood at Inegol (320,000m3) and you have the up-to- date picture.

Taking our main table listing from 2019, which showed a total installed capacity of 28,606,000m3, and then fine-tuning information with adjustments and corrections and with new capacity already installed in 2020, we reach the total of 28,931,800m3. Then, with the future new mills listed in Table 1 European capacity development, we now have a forecast figure of 30,925,000m3 as the total European capacity for 2021 and beyond.

NORTH AMERICA CAPACITY

In the US and Canada, production and sales of MDF showed continued momentum in 2020. The industry reported virtually every MDF mill running at capacity, driven particularly in the US by the strong dynamic of the domestic housing market and a V-shaped recovery after a slow down earlier in the year. Imports into the US of Asian furniture continues and while furniture manufacturing in North America has been growing again, it appears it will be some years before it returns to turn-of-the-century levels. Housing starts were improving steadily, the remodeling market remained strong with consumer purchases growing.

To update the main listing, the Georgia Pacific thin MDF mill at Monticello has now closed and some 100 people lost their jobs there, but the GP Mount Jewett mill continued to run well as did all formerly listed Flakeboard MDF mills in the US and Canada, now re-named Arauco North America in our listings.

The Medite MDF mill in Medford Oregon has operated well under the ownership of Roseburg in 2020. The Medford, Oregon plant is a well-run facility, and the acquisition represented a key strategic move for Roseburg in their evolving composite panel business, ahead of the Pembroke, Canada acquisition and then the Potlach Deltic Corp, 265,000m3 MDF mill at El Dorado, Arkansas.

During 2020, Arauco North America closed the 154,000m3 MDF facility that it owned in Eugene, Oregon on April 30 as well as its 251,000m3 MDF production facility in Bennettsville, South Carolina. The decisions were made to close these facilities permanently were based on a broader assessment that the older manufacturing platforms were no longer competitive in the prevailing MDF market, compared to the company's other more advanced MDF platforms.

In contrast the investment project by Swiss Krono for the new HDF /MDF plant at its facility in South Carolina has progressed successfully and is running well. The Swiss Krono plant at the Barnwell site has been expanded extensively to strengthen the HDF and laminate divisions throughout the Group. The new plant has a production capacity of around 280,000m3 of HDF, which is intended primarily for laminate flooring production in the company's own plant. The new plant added an additional 26 million m2 capacity. With these actions, Swiss Krono Group is responding to the growing demand on the American market for high-quality laminate flooring.

US RICE STRAW MDF PLANT LAUNCHES IN CALIFORNIA.

The new CalPlant 1 (formerly CalAg) project rice straw-based MDF plant in California is the most dynamic new feature for us to report on this year from the US as plant based raw materials start to emerge as viable and alternative raw material sources other than wood.

The project has been in development for more than 20 years, since the principals first shipped California-grown rice straw to England for testing. Since then, the endeavor experienced a series of ‘almosts,’ until the successful financing came together, which includes US$228m of tax-exempt private activity revenue bonds priced through the California Pollution Control Financing Authority, and US$87m cash equity.

In November 2020 CalPlant 1 started up production and officially launched the Eureka MDF brand – the world's first commercially produced, no-added-formaldehyde, rice straw-based MDF.

“This is a defining moment for the CalPlant family and the industry as a whole. Decades of work have brought us to this day as we launch Eureka,” said Jerry Uhland, CalPlant founder and CEO.

“When the Boyd family and I first set out to find a solution, we never could have imagined it would end in creating the world’s first-ever rice straw-based MDF, and in turn a more sustainable future for our planet.”

Eureka is manufactured using post-harvest rice straw, an agricultural waste product, and is engineered to match the performance of traditional wood based MDF in machinability, paintability and strength, says the company.

CalPlant 1 manufactures Eureka at the company's US$315m, 276-acre plant site just north of Sacramento. At full capacity, the plant will be able to produce more than 150 million ft2 annually (3/4in basis) and use 280,000 tons of rice straw. All fibre is procured from a 25-mile radius of the plant.

“This facility is the first of its kind in the world in so many ways,” Mr Uhland said. “Not only will it have a production capacity to supply 30% of California’s MDF demand, but it will also significantly reduce the use of water to flood rice fields in the Sacramento Valley, thereby cutting the production of greenhouse gases.

Rice straw is an annually renewable raw material, with all the material for the plant being procured each year from Sacramento Valley rice growers within a 15- to 25-mile radius of the plant site. Employing a Generation 9 Siempelkamp ContiRoll continuous press, which is 10ft wide and 35m long, CalPlant employs 140 full-time employees with 450 part-time jobs created during the annual straw collection period.

The mill is designed to produce 248,000m3 of MDF in thicknesses of 2mm to 30mm and this capacity has now been added into the main listing.

Many believe the latest endeavour is the first serious attempt of its kind, noting the investment, research and development, and roster of industry veterans throwing their weight behind the project.

“The overarching message related to this MDF is that it’s going to be a high-performance MDF that will go head-to-head with wood-based MDF,” said Elizabeth Whalen, vice-president of sales, marketing, and sustainability for CalPlant 1.

CANADA GREAT PLAINS WHEAT STRAW BASED MDF PROJECT MOVES FORWARD IN ALBERTA

In further developments utilising alternative non-wood raw materials, Great Plains MDF announced it has selected a site for its greenfield wheat straw-based MDF plant and has added two industry veterans in Lanny Hammock as vice-president, sales and marketing and Wade Gregory as vice-president operations to its team and has now also formed an alliance with a major construction firm.

The company says the plant, with a design capacity of 849,000m3, will be built in Kneehill County in Alberta, Canada. The site, which is in Equity, between Three Hills and Trochu, will house the proposed production facility and storage of wheat straw. The site is approximately 90km (56 miles) from Red Deer, Alberta, and 140km (87 miles) from Calgary, Alberta.

The Great Plains development plan will see Great Plains pursuing permissions with all the appropriate regulators (Government of Alberta, local municipality) in the coming months with construction expected to begin in the autumn of 2021, with commissioning by 2023.

Great Plains Innovations is the parent company of Great Plains MDF – Three Hills, which will build, own, and operate the mill. Great Plains Innovations intends to build a series of similar facilities across the Canadian prairies and elsewhere over the next 10 years. Great Plains MDF reports it has spent years researching and developing a process to make high quality medium density fibreboards out of agrifibres, using no-added formaldehyde.

Great Plains, together with project construction company PCL Construction, expects to complete its pre-construction work over the next few months.

MEXICO

In Mexico, we see the three projects there that we highlighted previously progressing well, with all of them being fully operational. And with the South America-based wood-based panel giant Arauco buying Masisa’s Mexican mills in a US$245m deal, which included the 220,000m3 MDF operation in Durango, it completes the ownership picture. Also and to note, Proteak Uno (Pro MDF) has been renamed Technotable, in Huimanguillo.

Total nominal production capacity of the MDF plants in Mexico has been adjusted up to 823,000m3/year, such a significant change from the small capacity of less than 80,000m3, which had been stable, for such a long time previously and only a few years ago.

The main incentive for these three companies, that together have invested more than US$400m in state-of-theart manufacturing facilities, is the very promising outlook in the Mexican market.

As a reminder, until recently, no continuous process plants existed in Mexico and per capita consumption remained very low compared to most countries. Also, the Mexican furniture industry is characterised by a comparatively high use of solid wood and plywood in relation to particleboard and MDF. Therefore, the perceived opportunities towards the continual future increase of MDF in the Mexican furniture manufacturing industry remain extremely positive.

The Mexico City-based PROTeak Uno, (Pro MDF), which specialises in plantation teak and solid wood products, previously unveiled its plans to establish a (280,000m3/ year) MDF plant in Mexico’s south-eastern sub-tropical Tabasco state, utilising eucalyptus wood from plantations in the south of the country.

Now renamed Technotable in Huimanguillo, the company built the plant on a greenfield site 67km from the state capital Villahermosa. The company previously announced that it signed a Co-operation Agreement with Financiera Maderera SA (Finsa), the largest Spanish producer and seller of wood panels, resins, melamine, and veneer, among other products, in the Iberian Peninsula.

Mexican wood panel producers are now driving several market development initiatives, which are gaining momentum and are at the forefront of a campaign to promote wider use, particularly of MDF, by the national furniture industry.

The panel makers are continually educating Mexico’s furniture designers (both current ones and young students) and manufacturers in the potential and versatility of working with MDF which, with its workability, is a natural substitute for traditional solid wood.

Total North American installed capacity for 2020, is now recorded at 5,818,000m3 down from the 6,129,000m3 shown and recorded for 2019 considering and taking account of the various mill closures detailed. Now, with the Mexican capacity installed and operational, along with the futuristic and large Canadian wheat-straw based MDF project, our table showing future capacity gives a forecast figure of 6,667,000m3 as a total capacity for the North American area for 2020/21 and beyond.