34 | Panel Perspectives: Paged Plywood
PLYWOOD ROCK STAR DEBUTS
Paged Plywood has brought a new product to market which incorporates rock fibre,
something it believes will make waves in the transportation, construction and other sectors due to its light weight and increased strength properties. Stephen Powney spoke to the company about the development
W
hen Paged Plywood embarked on an R&D exercise to increase plywood’s performance, there was some scepticism about what could be achieved. But a five-year development process
involving painstaking research and testing has yielded a patented new innovation, which the company proudly launched at the BAU exhibition in Germany during January 2025. For Poland-based Paged, which employs 1,700 people, the launch was a significant moment, and it sees the new RockPly – a plywood product combining hardwood veneers with rock fibres – as potentially having a very large market.
The headline claim is that RockPly® has approximately twice the bending strength
of comparable conventional birch plywood, which is regarded as the currently strongest plywood in the market. WBPI met with the Paged research and management team to look into how the product was developed, its applications and potential.
But first just a quick reminder on the
company. Paged Plywood operates five plywood production facilities across Poland and Estonia, with a group production capacity of approximately 220,000m3 Products are sold on nearly 80 world
.
markets, with industrial customer sectors including construction, transport, interior design, furnishings, and packaging. Birch, pine, alder, beech and aspen are among species used, with many product variations
including overlays and thin-veneer ply. Face veneering takes place in house using species such as oak, walnut, maple and ash.
NEW PRODUCT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT Paged’s LabTech R&D centre, a subsidiary company of Paged Plywood and established in 2019, is the hub that researches and tests new products.
LabTech, explained that plywood’s most important parameters were mechanical – as it was typically used in the construction and transport industries, with truck floors being a prime application due to the material’s light weight and good mechanical properties. The starting point for developing a
Above: RockPly has been launched by Paged Plywood WBPI | February/March 2025 |
www.wbpionline.com
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