My journey to visit a mill I have long wanted to see began with a two-hour flight from Jakarta on Java island to Balikpapan on the east coast of the island of Borneo, in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan. Then came a two-and-a-half hour drive north to Samarinda, arriving at midnight. I was glad to put off the rest of the journey to the mill in Tanjung Harapan until the morning and to check into an hotel in Samarinda, a quite large town supported principally by coal and oil.
It is situated on the Mahakam river and is the capital of, and most populous city in, Kalimantan. It is also the location for Sumalindo’s plywood factory (see p50). The next morning we embarked on a two-hour drive across country, largely on unfinished roads still under construction, to reach the small village of Tanjung Harapan beside the wide river Mahakam which is reputed to be crocodile-infested. There, standing out on the slope above the opposite river bank and looking slightly incongruous in this remote location were the cyclones of the Sumalindo MDF factory. A ferry driver was duly summoned and a small wooden flat-bottomed boat with outboard motor was produced to take me and my ‘guide’, Ahmad Syaukani from Sumalindo’s Samarinda plywood mill, across the river to visit the factory. Although that journey may have seemed somewhat arduous to me (and I wasn’t driving!), spare a thought for this company and its machinery suppliers when the first MDF line was built here in 1994. Then there was no usable road from Samarinda to Tanjung Harapan and everything – people and equipment – travelled by river from the city to the mill site. Clearance of the jungle and construction of the company’s first MDF line commenced in 1994, with start-up coming 12 months later. That first line was supplied as a package from Sunds Defibrator with a Küsters continuous press. Before that line was even running to its full potential, Sumalindo ordered a second MDF line to be supplied as a complete package by Siempelkamp, with a ContiRoll continuous press. That line started production in 1996. The combined capacity of the two lines is currently around 200,000m3 annually, with actual production of about 190,000m3. “We aim to reach 200,000m3 and will soon achieve 215,000m3,” said Mr Budi, head of production for line 2. “In February 2007, we will change the drive chain on the ContiRoll press for a stronger one from Siempelkamp to increase the speed, then we will achieve 215,000m3.” That changeover of the chain was expected to take a maximum of seven days’ downtime and will be supervised by a Siempelkamp engineer. Logs for the two MDF lines come from plantation acacia, gmelina and other tropical hardwood species close to the mill site. The company also has forest concessions in this area with permission to exploit the trees in a strictly controlled regime and has Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for some of its products (see p47). The company is currently investing very heavily at the MDF site. In December it was erecting a complete new factory to house 15 spindle-less rotary lathes from Taiwan to produce core veneer for its plywood mill in Samarinda. The company already has five of these lines from China working at the MDF factory since 2004, but needs additional capacity as log supplies from the plantations increase. These spindle-less lathes are able to peel logs down to a five centimetre core to maximise the high-value use of the wood supply. Waste from the veneer peeling is raw material for the MDF line, thus maximising the utilisation of the wood. Another major project underway in December was a coal-fired electricity generating plant to serve the two MDF lines and the rotary peeling lines. The complete project is being supplied from Shandong, China. Mr Lee Yuen Chak, a director of PT Sumalindo Lestari Jaya Tbk, explained the rationale behind this major investment. “The government subsidy on oil products such as diesel was withdrawn in August 2005 and this affected our MDF operation with high costs,” he explained. Up to now the factory has run on diesel generators, but with the withdrawal of subsidies the cost of diesel made such electricity generation uneconomic. “Subsidised fuel cost about Rph2,400 (US$0.27) a litre and after the subsidy was withdrawn the price went up as high as Rph6,000 a litre,” said Mr Lee. “We had always planned to build a coal-fired power plant but the loss of subsidy caused us to bring our plans forward and we financed and procured the equipment in early 2006.” Transport of the components took a month and construction began in August last year. This was not the first such power plant for the group, as an affiliated company has already been down the same route, so the plant purchased for the MDF factory has a proven track record. The structure towers above the existing buildings and will be rated at 15MW designed power output from two 7.5MW generators. The two MDF lines alone require 13MW, so there will be no spare capacity even then. Coal mining is a major industry in Kalimantan – we passed several coal fields on the drive here – and there will be no shortage of supply of this fuel. The power station is equipped with a crusher to produce granular coal for the furnace. The new power plant is clearly going to bring a dramatic reduction in Sumalindo’s energy costs and the company claims it will become one of the lowest-cost producers in the region. The MDF Lines A debarker by Fuji Kogyo removes bark from the logs, which is then burned in the energy plants. Line l has a Sunds energy plant, while line 2 has one from IMW, which, in common with most from this, now extinct, supplier is a source of some problems for Sumalindo. The debarker has three separate infeeds – one for logs needing debarking, one for those which come in ready-debarked and a spare in case of blockages. There is a large Fuji Kogyo disc chipper and two drum chippers, one by Zeno and the other by Klöckner. Chipping is followed at Sumalindo by chip washing to remove damaging impurities such as grit and stones. The chips are screened by Texpan screens on both lines to three sorts: fines which go to the energy plants; accepts; and oversize which goes to be re-chipped. Line 1 has a Sunds Defibrator refiner, while line 2 has one from Andritz. Both refiners currently run at around 14 tons/hour, but Sumalindo plans to upgrade both. Resin, wax and hardener are injected in the blowlines. Fibre is classified after drying. The Küsters press is 23m long, while the Siempelkamp ContiRoll is 22.5m. Forming is pneumatic on line 1 and mechanical on line 2. Both lines have Steinemann six-head sanders and cutting-to-size is handled by a Raumatic saw on line 1 and a Schwabedissen on line 2. Resin comes from the Orica Resins factory in Samarinda and from GCKA in Banjarmasin in the south of Kalimantan. Sumalindo produces boards in thicknesses of 2.4-25mm, with the regular production being in E1 or E2 grade using urea formaldehyde (UF) glues. The factory also produces E0 grade for export to Japan, employing melamine (MUF) glues. Densities are 650kg/m3 for low density fibreboard, using 60% gmelina species as the raw material, and 850kg/m3 for high-density, as well as the standard production. The factory runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, employing 800 staff, around 50-60% of whom come from the local village across the river. The rest come mainly from Java and are provided with accommodation at the factory. There are also several houses and a guest house at the site for management and guests. The lack of decent roads gives the company an environmental plus as all transport is necessarily by river, with MDF products going to the harbour by the plywood factory downriver, by barge. Markets for MDF vary according to prevailing prices but are generally around 40/60% local to export. Considering the obstacles which have to be overcome to develop a factory such as this in the middle of the jungle, one has to admire the engineers and the far-sightedness of the management at Sumalindo. The new electricity plant, incongruous as it looks in its jungle setting, is another bold step and the construction of the new veneer production factory will improve the financial viability of the site and optimise the utilisation of the valuable wood supply. n
