by Web Editor | Feb 18, 2016 | Taking Stock
Article by Rich Donnell,
Editor-In-Chief
The Panel & Engineered Lumber International Conference & Expo (PELICE) is held every other year in Atlanta, Ga. and is the only event of its kind that brings together participants from both the structural (plywood, OSB, engineered lumber) and non-structural (MDF, particleboard, laminates) segments of the worldwide panel industry.
Panel World magazine will again host the event, which will be held April 7-8 at the Omni Hotel at CNN Center Grand Ballroom North. And that’s why the issue of the magazine before you is given over to the PELICE Preview.
Obviously one purpose of the PELICE Preview is to provide you the timeline agenda of the speakers, especially the eight keynoters. I think you will agree that the agenda is the best PELICE has had since its inception in 2008. Topics such as Adhesives, Air Emissions Control, New Technologies, Safety and Operations Planning are always big; there’s also a panel discussion on China that involves panelists who “know” the China wood products industry because they spend a lot of time there.
Discussions at PELICE always turn to mill projects and certainly several keynoters and their companies are in the middle of huge ones. These speakers will be providing updates. A few of the projects—the new Swanson Group plywood mill in Oregon, the new Winston Veneer and Plywood mill in Mississippi, and the new Proteak MDF plant in Mexico—will be starting up about the same time their people address the PELICE audience. How cool is that? Some nervousness could be in the air.
Another purpose of the PELICE Preview is to recognize the equipment and supplier companies who have already filled the available booth space in the Grand Ballroom North. Seventy-eight companies have signed on as either Gold, Silver or Bronze sponsors. In addition to showing their technologies at their booths, many of them are making presentations on new developments and projects involving their technologies.
These are truly cut-to-the-chase presentations. Our exhibitors at PELICE have been around long enough to know that if their talks slip into fairly mindless promotion that the audience full of producer personnel tends to drift out of the meeting room.
PELICE has always put a lot of stock in allowing vendors to make presentations. So much of the technology originates with them and is enhanced because of them. It would be foolhardy to exclude them.
The final purpose of the PELICE Preview issue is to allow you to take a few moments to read through this issue of Panel World. I think you’ll come to the conclusion, if you haven’t already, that you need to attend the fifth PELICE and get to “the heart of the matter.” Of course it’s not all business; there are several food and beverage events and the “camaraderie” will be flying.
Visit www.pelice-expo.com to register, or just e-mail me—[email protected]— and I’ll get you on your way.
by Web Editor | Feb 17, 2016 | News
A new kind of engineered lumber is being tested at the University of Maine. This new “plywood on steroids” could compete with other construction materials like concrete and steel, and this new industry may help add value back into Maine’s forests.
“It would be a new market, it would be a new factory, sort of like making furniture, except it’s really big pieces,” said Steve Shaler, director of the School of Forest Resources at UMaine.
The new market would be for cross laminated timber, an engineered plywood created and tested at the University of Maine. CLT is made with different types of wood from Maine’s forests. It’s then pressed into a strong construction material, ready to use at construction sites.
“They come out as large panels, solid panels with windows and door openings pre-cut, maybe utility locations pre-cut, and they’re swung into place and connected together and they go up very very quickly with very little cutting on site, very little waste on site,” said Bill Davids, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“This is for taller structures, four stories, 10, there are buildings now that are made out of wood that are 10 stories tall,” said Shaler. The blocks of spruce, pine and fir were stress tested and broken under 10,000 pounds of force, which is stronger than normal lumber, but lighter than other building materials like steel and concrete.
From WCSH 6 News: https://www.wcsh6.com/news/plywood-on-steroids-changes-lumber-industry/41656511
by Web Editor | Feb 10, 2016 | News
Last month we saw cross-laminated timbers installed at the Albina Yard project in Portland. It was the first use of U.S.-produced CLT in a building-wide structural system.
The first level of CLT (4,000 square feet) on Albina Yard went up in fewer than four hours. Last week, the second level was installed by a crew of seven in under two hours. Pretty remarkable, considering the contractor says it would have taken at least twice as many people two days or more to frame the same amount of floor space using traditional methods. Albina Yard is a four-story, 16,000-square-foot creative office project in north Portland. Besides its snazzy design by LEVER Architecture, the project is most notable for being tangible evidence that the U.S. CLT industry is officially off the ground.
There’s been a lot of buzz around CLT and mass timber in general over the past several months in Oregon and around the country — and rightly so. Besides drastically improved speed of construction (and the savings that go with that), mass timber offers significant environmental benefits. This includes tremendous carbon-storing capacity. Half the dry weight of wood is carbon. It got there when the trees were growing and absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. That carbon remains locked up for as long as the wood remains in use (a nine-story wood structure in China is now 959 years old—nearly a millennium). The new trees planted to replace those that were harvested start the carbon cycle all over again.
According to a quick, back-of-the-napkin calculation, Albina Yard, which is small by commercial construction standards, stores about 80.5 metric tons of carbon. That’s equivalent to offsetting 295 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
A larger Portland mass timber building, Clay Creative (60,000 square feet), stores more than 1 million pounds of carbon. Its total of 457.5 metric tons offsets 1,678 metric tons of CO2 emissions. “An additional 3,574 metric tons of CO2 emissions were avoided by using wood rather than concrete and steel,” says Dr. Jim Bowyer, an expert on the subject at Dovetail Partners, Inc.
From the Oregon Forest Resources Institute: https://oregonforests.org/blog/mass-timber-rising
by Web Editor | Feb 3, 2016 | News
Norbord To Invest $135 Million In Scotland OSB Mill
Canadian firm Norbord has announced plans to invest £95m at its wood panels plant in the Highlands. It aims to double production at its base in Dalcross, near Inverness, to meet rising demand. Highlands and Islands Enterprise has also offered an £11m grant towards the proposed expansion. The factory produces oriented strand boards (OSB) which are used in the construction industry.
Alex Paterson, chief executive of Highlands and Islands Enterprise said: “We have been working very closely with Norbord on their development plans and are delighted to be supporting the company to invest so substantially in its Highland base.
“This development will put Norbord’s Inverness plant on a sustainable footing for decades to come, and is a huge vote of confidence in the company’s Scottish workforce.
“It’s worth noting that the positive impact of today’s announcement will be felt well beyond Inverness and the Inner Moray Firth. “Norbord is not only a significant local employer in its own right, it also plays an important strategic role in the region’s forestry sector and is a major user of haulage companies and port infrastructure.”
From STV News: news.stv.tv
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by Web Editor | Jan 27, 2016 | News
A plywood and veneer mill being built in Springfield will provide 200 full-time jobs once fully operational.
Glendale, Oregon-based Swanson Group is building the new mill on the site of its former facility, which burned in a 2014 fire. According to information from the company, total costs, including permitting, construction and equipment, could exceed $55 million.
While the plant is expected to be up and running in April, it likely won’t reach full capacity until August. The new mill will be roughly 345,000 square feet, located at 1651 S F St., according to company spokesperson Cameron Stewart.
Several factors pushed the company to rebuild rather than lease a different facility, including Springfield’s “proven and dedicated workforce” and its nearby timber sources, according to Stewart.
When at full capacity, the plant will produce about 20 million square feet of veneer each month, which will be turned into 10 to 12 million square feet of plywood products. Annually, it will produce some 120 million square feet of finished plywood products.
From the Portland Business Journal: https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/blog/sbo/2016/01/springfield-plywood-mill-rises-from-ashes-will.html
