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Comact's DDM6 line based in Finland at Kuhmo Oy!
A success story for Kuhmo Oy and Comact
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Lying slap bang on the line that devides southern Finland from the north, Kuhmo Oy has had to develop clever startegies to counter increasing conservation restraints from both sides of the borders.
Marketing director Juha Virta explained: ''We are stuck in the middle of two administration poles, so we suffer from two bites of conservation rather than one. Both areas are reducing the amount of mature forest available for sawmilling - by at least 30%. We needed to overcome the supply problems as, forest is being taken away, customer demand is growing.''
Independently-owned Kuhmo, one of Finland's largest sawmills, which has a brown bear - Ursus - as its trademark, realized that what was available in abundance were small logs starting from 40-years-old thinnings - but it did not have the technology to fully use them.
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The company turned to Canada for help, recognising that it had the experience and machinery to handle extreme variations of log size and length. The result was a small log line, the first of its kind in the world and the first delivery to Europe by Canadian company Comact. The new line complements Kuhmo's main line which was installed in 1992. The new line, which had to be adapted in many ways to meet European quality requirements, is part of a three-year £11m investment programme which has also included a FinScan full colour grading system and further kilning at Kuhmo.
Production with the new line is set to reverse a trend which last year saw the company take in 250,000 more logs but achieve 6,000m3 less in production on the previous year simply because the logs were getting smaller. Mr Virta said: ''The Finnish average volume for a log is 0.20-0.21m3. Ours was 0.15m3 and is now coming down to 0.13m3 with the new line. There is plenty of raw material of this diameter within a 120km radium of Kuhmo. It is close grain and good quality. Our total procurement is about 600,000m3 a year overall and this will probably rise to 650,000m3 this year because of the smaller logs.'' Previously around 25% of Kuhmo's product came from log sizes below normal, but that is now set to rise to 40%.
Mr Virta said: ''We came up with a package for the Canadians, specifying what quality finish and accuracy of measure was required, the capacity needed, the layout of the site, what space we had available and where the new line had to join in with the rest of the machinery. Together with quality, speed was one of the most crucial factors. In Scandinavia we are used to handling logs of the same size, one size at a time. In Canada, they are used to sawing different sizes - short, long, thick or thin. There is nothing like this new saw line in Europe. There are similar structures in Canada but they wouldn't try to maximise the yield in the way we do.''
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Source:
Timber Trades Journal
October 2003 |
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