Focus on MDF Part 1: Europe & North America | 25
During this period, it has been very hard to assure MDF production and that is why there have been calls by the EPF for EU mitigation measures, specifically a secure gas supply; the cascade use of wood; prioritising wood- based products in line with the green deal and reducing regulatory burdens wherever possible. Clouds on the horizon continue to include weak consumer demand; supply chains remaining a challenge; and too many sectors are looking at wood (with subsidies) as a way to decarbonise, leading to great concerns about wood availability for traditional products, such as panels. Last year we highlighted that 2023 was the last full year of the 2019-2024 European Commission. This had been notable for the Green Deal, which brought both good and bad to the sector. The good was the prominence for carbon storing, biobased products like panels. The bad was a lot of very challenging – and not always supported – legislation for industry. As the EPF looks towards 2024-2029, it hopes not only for a continuation of the Green Deal, but adjustments so that industry might be a driver, not a victim of it. The greatest hope is that the Affordable Energy Act that is part of the Clean Industrial Deal, will help the sector regain some industrial competitiveness in the light of various strategic attacks from all sides Moving on, region by region, in France, we understand the MDF market and supply has been quite depressed and difficult, particularly in the trade related sector. It has been noted previously that the market for thin MDF was particularly strong as vinyl flooring appears less accepted and HDF- based laminate flooring is apparently still coming back in force there. Privately owned Panneaux de Corrèze was acquired by Unilin Group and this acquisition apparently was part of Unilin Group’s strategic growth ambitions and will allow its Unilin Panels division to better serve the French market.
The facility produces approximately 150,000m3
of raw MDF panels with its
production plant in Corrèze, in the centre of France with 110 employees. The company is well known for its excellent quality MDF panels, strong brands, and sustainability innovations.
The panel division of Unilin Group – Unilin
Panels – is a European market leader and the company also operates two MDF/HDF lines in Bazeilles, northern France with a combined annual capacity of about 700,000m³. Unilin Panels aims to achieve 25% growth by 2025/6 and be the market leader in Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Thanks to its ‘Next’ range, Panneaux de
Corrèze had a great deal of expertise on reducing the use of fossil raw materials to manufacture its panels. The company
launched its ‘Next natural panel’ line using the Green Ultimate bio-based, formaldehyde and PMDI-free adhesive system developed by Evertree. In October 2024, Unilin and Dieffenbacher announced an agreement to introduce and further commercialise Unilin’s “Osiris” wood fibreboard recycling technology. Under this agreement, Dieffenbacher is the preferred partner for offering Osiris machine and equipment technology into fibreboard production processes globally.
Dieffenbacher is supplying Unilin with an industrial-scale fibreboard recycling plant called “Osiris 2.0,” which succeeds Unilin’s “Osiris 1.0” industrial pilot installation at its MDF plant in Bazeilles, France. The new plant will boost Unilin’s fibreboard recycling capacity from 1 to 10 tonnes per hour and will be able to process post- consumer MDF material.
“Dieffenbacher is currently the only supplier that can provide us with such a large capacity and whose equipment can recycle post-consumer fibreboard material, for example from bulky waste, in addition to production waste and residual materials from our own MDF and HDF production,” said Jan Gallet, general manager MDF at Unilin.
Dieffenbacher’s scope of supply for Unilin includes the fibre transport and storage system, fibre sifters, glue preparation and dosing, PROjet glue-saving system, pneumatic systems and an Emission Control System. The steam explosion vessel for the re-fibreing process was newly designed by Dieffenbacher Energy in Bludenz, Austria, and optimised for fibreboard recycling. Dieffenbacher will also be responsible for the steel construction, transport and conveyor systems, and the plant’s electrics and automation. Start-up of the fibreboard recycling plant is planned for the autumn of 2025. In contrast, the Finsa-owned Mediland MDF facility in Morcenx, south-west France closed four years ago. The mill, formally owned by Willamette industries and then Weyerhaeuser Co, was a part of Finsa France. The Morcenx facility has become a strategic distribution point in France for Finsa’s wood-based panel products coming from Spain. The consequence of these recent developments means that Unilin Group is now the sole producer of MDF in France. In Portugal and Spain, investment in new
technology continues and Finsa installed Dieffenbacher glue-saving technology in two production lines in Nelas, Portugal during 2024. The 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. After Unilin, it is fair to say that the Iberian peninsula producers lead the way in maximising the recycling technologies that are slowly emerging.
In recent years Kronospan has emerged
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 the UK and Ireland there were no new capacity investments or change from the three main MDF players – West Fraser, Kronospan and MEDITE (Coillte) and all had relatively strong order books in 2024. But a few observations over the last 12 months from that area have been noted – the ongoing flow of goods from continental EU into UK, a factor given the challenging economics there, especially from Germany. Rising costs continue to be a problem, especially resin and energy given their importance to the MDF processes and softer demand in housing, furniture and RMI also proving problematic and having to be worked through.
Also, in this region and to note, in
September 2024, Accsys Technologies announced that it would discontinue the Tricoya plant in Hull owned by Tricoya UK Ltd (‘Tricoya UK’), a wholly owned entity of Accsys set up for the construction and operation of the Tricoya plant. The plant was designed to acetylate wood fibres that were to be used by MEDITE and FINSA to make Tricoya modified MDF wood panels. A final exceptional non-cash impairment charge of circa €20m and an exceptional cash cost of circa €4.5m will be recognised in the Company’s H1 FY25 results for the discontinuation and winding up of the Tricoya plant. Accsys retains the intellectual property for Tricoya and will continue producing materials for the Tricoya product range from its production site in Arnhem to meet growing demand from existing customers. However, Accsys has told WBPI that it will look in the future at new routes to produce acetylated fibre. Currently, solid Accoya boards are chipped by MEDITE and Finsa to convert into the modified fibre. In other industry wide developments, the
interest and visibility of bio-resin panels is clearly growing in Europe, especially in the Benelux. MDF producers are now more regularly seeing organic customer questions and enquires on this topic and two MDF producers have launched bio-based MDF panels into this market in the last 12 months.
www.wbpionline.com | June/July 2025 | WBPI
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