Krefeld, April 16, 2020 – On March 14, a Siempelkamp plant for OSB at Vanachai in Surat Thani/Thailand was accepted. On the one hand, it is the first OSB plant in Southeast Asia. On the other hand, the ContiRoll® with dimensions of 4′ x 48.7 m is the longest 4’-ContiRoll® from Siempelkamp. In addition, this milestone stands for almost 40 years of business relations between a visionary wood-based panel manufacturer and Siempelkamp.
The cooperation between the Vanachai Group and Siempelkamp started almost 40 years ago; the first single-opening presses from Krefeld were installed at the Chachoengsao location in the early 1980s. In Surat Thani alone, six wood-based panel plants for particleboard, MDF, and now OSB cover all performance facets with which a wood-based panel producer can convince its markets. The Vanachai site in southern Thailand is considered a megasite among the few plant locations of similar size – panel production in Surat Thani is around 2 million m³ per year.
The new OSB plant, ordered by Siempelkamp in 2017, contributes 700 m³ per day to the total output of the site – that is 210,000 m³ per year. The plant complements Vanachai’s production spectrum with OSB and sets new benchmarks in the Southeast Asian wood-based panel market, which has long been dominated by particleboard and MDF plants. Vanachai, founded in 1943 as a sawmill, once again underlines its intuition for trends and innovations in the wood-based panel industry. For Siempelkamp, the leading technology supplier, this latest cooperation represents another important reference in Southeast Asia through the first industrial use of rubberwood in the production of OSB boards.
“With the new plant we are setting ourselves ambitious goals for the wood-based panel production of the future. Our boards are produced highly efficiently and according to strict sustainability criteria, and our plants are state-of-the-art. In this respect, Siempelkamp, as a partner with many years of experience and strong innovative capabilities, is the right choice for an ambitious project like this one,” says Wanthana Jaroennawarat, Chairman of the Executive Board at Vanachai.
Marc Müller, Head of Commercial Sales at Siempelkamp, adds: “We are proud to play our part in such a future-oriented project of a visionary wood-based products manufacturer with this plant!”
