Balikesir represents the Kastamonu Entegre group’s third panel production facility, chronologically, and occupies a large site of 400,000m2.
Built in 2005, this line produces around 1,700m3 a day of particleboard in the winter months and 2,000m3 in the summer, on an 18mm basis.
Wood supply is 95% pine and 5% poplar and beech. The pine comes in log form, mostly from state-owned forests, but also with some sawmill slabs and sawdust. All the logs are cut to 1m lengths in the forest, by government order.
Tipper trucks loaded with logs reverse up an incline and empty their load straight into the vibrating feeder for the Pallmann chipper, or it can be fed from the large and very neatly-stacked logyard with a Sennebogen grab crane.
There is a Pal of Italy disc screen in the feeding line to remove some of the contaminants.
The chipper is a PHT 850×1,450mm unit and has a capacity of 120 tonnes per hour (tph) bone dry wood. It is run by two 630kW, 10kV motors.
A covered conveyor by Trasmec of Italy takes the chips up to the flaker building where two Pal screens and a sifter sort the wet macro- and micro-chips and there is then a bank of eight Pallmann PZKR 14-1450 knife ring flakers – four each for the two chip sizes.
Kastamonu Balikesir has two Pallmann robot knife ring sharpeners, designated PZSE 14-450, which fully automatically sharpen and re-set the knife rings for the flakers.
The dryer, installed in September 2005, is by Büttner of Germany. It is 5.6m in diameter and 30m in length and has a capacity of 41tph bone dry.
Oscillating screens by Pal separate core layer and surface layer dry chips, over-size chips and dust and the over-size goes to the Pallmann mill and flaker.
In a sophisticated resin manufacturing operation there are three urea formaldehyde and one melamine formaldehyde, and one formaldehyde, reactor in a dedicated building on the site.
The three urea reactors hold 26 tonnes of urea formaldehyde resin and the melamine reactor holds 15 tonnes.
Methanol from on-site storage tanks is mixed with air and oxygen and passes to the reactor for oxidation.
Formaldehyde gas is fed into the bottom of an absorption column and water into the top and the resulting formaldehyde solution passes to storage tanks to be used in the synthesis of UF resins.
The glue kitchen and dosing system for the particleboard line is by Imal.
Forming is by CMC Texpan, with pneumatic forming for the surface layers and mechanical for the core. It employs four forming heads – two for each.
The Siempelkamp ContiRoll press is 42.1m long and nominally eight feet wide.
Following the press there is a 12-head GreCon thickness/blow detection system after the cross-cut saw and ahead of the three star coolers.
A fully automated intermediate transport and storage system takes the panels for a one-day wait before sanding.
A Steinemann Satos eight-head sander has four calibration and four finishing heads.
Balikesir has a gas turbine for electricity generation and the hot exhaust gas is used to provide heat for the dryer and for the thermal oil heater for the press. The boiler incorporates a combi-burner for gas and sawdust.
In August 2007, a brand new Bürkle direct printing/lacquering line was installed at the Balikesir factory. The total length of the U-shaped line is 220m and it can run at up to 60m/minute, depending whether it is running woodgrain or plain colour finishes.
There are two Wemhöner short-cycle press lines and 65-70% of production is surfaced in this facility, which can handle up to 6,000 boards per day per line, although factory manager Hüsnü Çelen said they have achieved a figure of 7,000. "It depends of course on the board thickness and the type of paper being applied."
Six months after the particleboard line went into production, Kastamonu installed a Vits decor paper impregnation line and has achieved a throughput of an impressive 65m/minute, equivalent, says Mr Çelen, to 4.5 million m2/month. This is all consumed at the Balikesir site.
"We have 140 to 150 different decor designs in total, with 60 to 70 in regular use," said the factory manager.
The Balikesir factory, like the other Kastamonu production facilities, is a well-equipped, modern and efficient operation and is also pretty much self-sufficient in its facilities, with paper impregnation, resin production and short-cycle pressing all available on site.
