Panels & Furniture Asia March/April 2023

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CONTENTS
CONTENTS
PANELS & FURNITURE ASIA (ISSUE 2)
March / April 2023
08
Editor’s Note
10
News
Market Report
16
The inevitable
Environmental Report
18
Communities at the heart of sustainable forestry in
Guatemala
22
Towards a circular economy
In Person
26
Unpacking domestic and global furniture trends with
HOMAG Asia
Product Highlight
28
Slim area grippers for wood processing
29
Comfort Core: Upgrade in sound and walking
comfort for flooring
30
NiRo collet chuck Premium for long-term CNC
machining with shank tools
Panel Manufacturing
32
OSB and its variants
34
Optimal sanding of all sides: New sanding line by
Destefani
36
Inspecting digital and gravure decorated CPL with
Baumer technology
Furniture Manufacturing
38
Complex milling implemented automatically
40
Q-Cut G6 Edition: Finish-cut quality with longer tool
life
42
Intelligent equipment and customised software offer
competitive production model
Materials
44
Sandwiched Variable Eggcrate Structure:
Reconstituted timber component for wall and
flooring use
48
Local material for local needs: Rubberwood furniture
by MUJI Singapore
48
Flooring
50
A unique retreat
Structural Elements
52
An insider’s view of structural engineering and design
56
The Black & White Building
Columnist
60
EU adopts deforestation-free products regulation
62
Calendar of Events
64
List of Advertisers
6 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023
10

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FROM THE EDITOR
Normalcy is overrated
As China relaxes its quarantine measures, as
sales and supply chains are stabilising, I am
tempted to say that the industry is back to
normal, pre-pandemic levels. But this begs the
question of what is normal. Is the pre-pandemic
same as the normal?
I have not been in the industry long enough to
answer this question. Seasoned professionals,
I am sure, will have a better and more nuanced
response. But one thing I will say is that
taking the pre-pandemic as the normal is not
necessarily a good thing. It might mean we have
gone backwards, that we have stagnated.
Even the phrase ‘new normal’ should be taken
with a pinch of salt. Every day there are new
circumstances we must take into account.
Wolfgang Neeser, managing director of HOMAG
Asia, speaks about the China Plus One strategy
that is happening in various manufacturing
industries, but is curious how it will affect the
wood and woodworking industry in the future
(p.26). Peter Fitch, CEO of IOI Palm Wood,
speaks about the new EU deforestation-free law
that necessitates companies to produce a due
diligence statement for their products, showing
they are not complicit in deforestation (p.60).
In business context, perhaps normalcy is not
even achievable, out of our control. What we
should be doing, I think, is to future-proof our
operations and business models. Look ahead,
not backwards. Keep ourselves grounded,
but not until we lose sight of what is more
important: ways to innovate, advance our
business, and grow.
In this issue, we feature new products such
as new area grippers by vacuum technology
manufacturer Schmalz (p.28), a new sanding
line by sanding machine manufacturer
Destefani (p.34), and new rubberwood
furniture by Japanese retailer MUJI Singapore
(p.48). We also bring updates about industry
trends. Dieffenbacher goes in depth about
the types of oriented strand board (OSB) in
the industry now (p.32). As mentioned earlier,
our interview with HOMAG Asia details not
just about China Plus One but about furniture
trends on the whole.
We also focused more on structural
engineering in this issue. Take some time to
learn more about the software used in mass
timber construction and prefabrication from
our interview with structural engineering firm
Studio Fornalè (p.52), and admire the mass
timber beauty of the new Black & White
Building in London, UK (p.56). Mass timber
is still slow on the uptake in Asia, especially
South East Asia. But seeing the way it has
taken hold of western countries, maybe it is
time we should pay more attention to it.
YAP SHI QUAN | EDITOR
PANELS &
FURNITURE ASIA
PABLO SINGAPORE
Publisher
William Pang • williampang@pabloasia.com
Editor
Yap Shi Quan • shiquan@pabloasia.com
Feature Writer
Pang YanJun • yanjun@pabloasia.com
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Goh Meng Yong • mengyong@pabloasia.com
Circulation Manager
Shu Ai Ling • circulation@pabloasia.com
PABLO BEIJING
General Manager
Ellen Gao • pablobeijing@163.com
PABLO SHANGHAI
Editor
Kresly Shen • pabloshanghai@163.net
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Front cover image: Leitz Tooling
8 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

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NEWS
SIEMPELKAMP SUPPLIES STEVES & SONS WITH
DOOR SKINS MANUFACTURING
EQUIPMENT
US door manufacturer Steves & Sons has placed
an order with Siempelkamp for two forming
and press lines for the production of door skins.
With this order, it plans to enter the door skins
manufacturing business.
According to Siempelkamp, the decisive
factor for both companies’ cooperation is
Siempelkamp’s experience in the woodbased
panel industry, which includes plants
for the production of thin medium-density
fibreboard (MDF) and high-density fibreboard
(HDF) boards.
Each press line consists of a fibre classifier, mat
forming, forming line and a multi-daylight press
reportedly able to yield millions of door skins
per year. For the press line design, the focus
was specifically on product variety, combined
with a minimisation of trim waste.
Steves & Sons has also placed an order with
Siempelkamp subsidiary Büttner for two
fibre dryers and an energy plant. For the
process heat supply of the mill, Büttner will
contribute an energy system based on biomass
combustion, including flue gas pre-cleaning as
well as two fibre drying systems.
The energy system not only supplies thermal
energy to the drying systems, but it also heats
thermal oil for press heating and generates
steam for wood defibration.
This experience is also in demand for the
production of door skins: thin moulded
hardboard panels which, glued to frames on
both sides, are used as interior doors.
From appearance and material density to
thickness tolerances, various factors affect
the appearance, final quality, and ultimately
the production costs of the door skins.
“Our experience in the North American
market, our competence in being able to
adapt technical designs very specifically
to local requirements, convinced Steves
& Sons,” said Dirk Koltze, president of
Siempelkamp LP/Büttner in Charlotte, US,
and Andreas Krott, senior sales and project
engineer of Siempelkamp Maschinen- und
Anlagenbau.
Siempelkamp’s forming line of the multi-daylight plant
for manufacturing door skins (Image: Siempelkamp)
“We can also bring to the table our
exceptional expertise in the planning of
complete plants. This ensures an optimal
process technology and operating cost
design, for example in the form of low
maintenance and energy costs, minimised
use of raw materials, and a high degree of
automation.”
The commissioning and start-up for all the
equipment are scheduled for 2024. P
CHINA: FORESTRY OUTPUT TOTALLED US$1.17TN OF VALUE
According to a statement at a recent national
conference in China, the output value of
China’s national forest industry in 2022 totalled
RMB8.04tn (US$1.17tn). The country is now
among the world’s leading players in terms
of the scale and growth rate of its forestry
industry.
China has continuously expanded its
range of forest products. At present
there are over 10,000 different kinds of
wood and bamboo products available
across the country. China has meanwhile
planted over 6.67 million hectares of
bamboo.
With an annual output value approaching
RMB320bn, the country’s bamboo sector
has helped over 15 million people working
in the industry to earn annual per capita
income of more than RMB10,000.
Over the past 10 years China has planted 40
million hectares of commercial forests with
the output value of commercial forestry
products surpassing RMB2.2tn, more than
twice that of a decade ago.
China has pursued the high-quality
development of its forest. The annual output
value of the three major sub-sectors of the
forest industry, wood and bamboo, commercial
forest products and forest-related tourism has
come to exceed over RMB1tn.
Furthermore, domestic demand picked up
after China reopened their borders and relaxed
quarantine measures, as well as launched real
estate stimulus policies.
According to the Global Timber Index (GTI)
released in December 2022, China’s GTI was
above the critical level of 50, which means
timber production and operations increased
from the previous month. P
Source: ITTO
10 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

NEWS
UNILIN, BARBERAN, ZEETREE REACH AGREEMENT ON
CREATING FREEDOM
FOR DIGITAL PRINTING
AND TEXTURING
Unilin Technologies, Barberan and
Zeetree have all reached an agreement
with different parties to open up their
patent portfolio for direct-to-board digital
printing and texturing.
Through the most recent agreements,
Unilin is now able to offer expanded
patent protection that includes not only
the main Unilin patents in the area of
digital structuring, but also additional
relevant patents from Barberan, Hymmen,
Zeetree, Classen, Kronospan and i4F.
Unilin Technologies
in partnership with
companies Barberan
and Zeetree
The agreement also puts an end to the
legal battles between different technology
providers and offers enhanced legal
security to anyone desiring to step into
digital printing and texturing of decorative
panels.
“Today we have cleared up some legal
hurdles that kept some companies from
investing in digital printing,” stated Sophie
Demuenynck, legal director at Unilin
Technologies.
“After years of R&D for digital printing and
texturing technologies, we are pleased
that this agreement will bring new
possibilities to the industry. We are happy
to bring interested parties into contact
with our partners Barberan and Zeetree
that are offering state-of-the-art digital
embossed textures and durability never
seen before.”
The agreement aims to create enhanced
freedom to operate and legal certainty
for those interested in digital printing and
texturing for decorative panels.
Unilin Technologies, Barberan and
Zeetree are all specialist companies in
digital printing for wood surfaces. Back
in 2021, Unilin announced its partnership
with Barberan and Zeetree for highperformance
digital texturing solutions. P
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 11

NEWS
DIEFFENBACHER
TO SUPPLY NEW
CEBRO OSB PLANT
FOR TOLKO
INDUSTRIES
Tolko Industries has commissioned
Dieffenbacher to supply the core components
of a CEBRO oriented strand board (OSB)
plant for its production facility in High Prairie,
Alberta, Canada.
Back in May 2022, a fire broke out in Tolko’s
press building which damaged beyond repair
the Dieffenbacher 12-opening press that
Tolko commissioned in 1995, and much of the
surrounding equipment.
According to Dieffenbacher, a new CPS+
continuous press will replace the previous
press. The scope of supply for the rebuild
of Tolko’s High Prairie site also includes the
Tolko’s OSB production
site at High Prairie,
Alberta, Canada
(Image: Dieffenbacher)
forming station and forming line, and the raw
board handling system.
In line with Dieffenbacher’s CEBRO smart plant
concept, the Press Emission Control System
and the Intelligent Air Management System will
reportedly improve the plant’s sustainability
by creating cleaner air inside and outside the
production hall.
The new digitalisation solution EVORIS and the
digital service platform MyDIEFFENBACHER will
also help make Tolko’s new plant a smart one.
“It is great that Dieffenbacher stepped
up so quickly to help us after the fire,”
said Fred Chinn, vice-president of
strand-based business at Tolko. “Once
we rebuild, High Prairie will be better
than ever, and our new CEBRO smart
plant will be a big part of that.”
Chinn believes the plant will produce
its first new board by the end of 2023.
Once operational, the plant’s production
capacity will reach up to 734,000m³ of
OSB per year. P
IKEA TO INCREASE TRANSPARENCY
ABOUT WOOD SUPPLY CHAIN
IKEA will be sharing information about their wood
supply chain henceforth (Image: IKEA)
Furniture retailer and supplier IKEA has
announced a commitment towards greater
transparency in the wood supply chain, openly
sharing where all the wood material in their
products come from and why wood plays such
an essential role in their product range.
To exemplify this commitment, IKEA released a
map of the 45 markets where they sourced their
wood from in FY2022, which is from 1 Sep
2021-31 Aug 2022.
By sharing this new information, IKEA aims
to build greater awareness for consumers
on their approach of ensuring responsible
wood-sourcing practices.
“People are curious to know more about
how we work. Alongside this, the world
increasingly recognises the importance
forests play for people and the planet,” said
Ulf Johansson, global wood supply and
forestry manager at Inter IKEA Group.
“We believe greater transparency will help
support the development of responsible
forest management globally.”
For instance, in the map, Poland, Lithuania
and Sweden are the top three markets
IKEA has sourced their wood from. Russia
and Belarus occupied a 6% and 5% share
respectively, but IKEA reported that they
have dropped these markets as their wood
supplier.
The map also includes new information about
wood species, regions where they come from,
volumes and how IKEA works to improve forest
management across markets.
As a key part of IKEA’s Scandinavian design
heritage, wood has played an essential role in
their product range. New information about
how IKEA designs and innovates with woodbased
materials is also available, together with
examples of finding new ways to use wood
more efficiently.
“Wood is a fantastic material that is durable,
renewable and recyclable and essential for
our transformation towards becoming a
circular business by 2030,” said Fredrika Inger,
managing director of IKEA Sweden.
“It is very appreciated by our customers
as it often allows their own creativity, for
example, with our untreated offer. Wood is
also important for our IKEA design identity and
strongly delivers the five dimensions of our
Democratic Design.” P
12 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

NEWS
EGGER ACQUIRES
NORTH CAROLINA-
BASED WASTE
WOOD RECYCLING
FACILITY TO
BOOST RECYCLING
OPERATIONS
Egger has acquired Novem Industries, a wood
recycling facility in Charlotte, North Carolina,
US, under its waste wood recycling subsidiary
Timberpak.
Timberpak will also serve as an additional
source of wood for Egger’s particleboard
and TFL production while furthering the
company’s sustainability goals.
This acquisition will be Timberpak’s 14th
worldwide facility, adding onto other
waste wood collection operations in
the UK, Romania, France, Germany and
Poland. P
Source: Woodworking Network
Timberpak specialises in waste wood recycling
This acquisition will enhance Egger’s aim to
create more from wood and be sustainable for
future generations.
As Markus Frevert, plant manager for
production at Egger Wood Products explained:
“This acquisition will not only serve an
important role in bolstering our sustainability
initiatives here in North America but will also
better position us in key markets as we continue
to expand and grow.
“Timberpak will process post-consumer
recycled materials to be used in the production
of particleboard and thermally fused laminate
(TFL) products at our Lexington, North Carolina
manufacturing plant. This diverts resources that
would have otherwise gone to landfills.”
Acquiring Novem Industries will help Timberpak
to transition and adapt its European-based
processes and procedures to meet the
needs of Egger’s Lexington plant, supplying
raw materials for the plant’s on-site wood
recycling operation, which is currently under
construction.
Timberpak will accept construction and
demolition waste wood. The wood will be
ground into pieces about one foot in length
before being delivered to the Lexington
production plant.
Further processing will occur at the on-site
wood recycling facility. The recycled wood will
be scanned for foreign materials, including
metal, stones and plastics, before being crushed
into an appropriate size for particleboard
production.
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 13

NEWS
LIGNA 2023 READY TO WELCOME
VISITORS IN MAY 2023
FORMAT
LIGNA 2023 will present itself in seven
product segments, categorised according
to their halls:
Halls 11-15 and 27 will be on tools and
machinery for customised and mass
production. Halls 16-17 will be on surface
technology. Hall 26 will be on woodbased
panel production. Hall 25 will be
on sawmill technology. Halls 25-26 and
an open-air site will be on wood energy.
Hall 16 will be on machine components
and automation technology, and P32-
35 and the open-air site will feature
machinery for forestry, roundwood and
sawn timber production.
At Hall 12, the LIGNA.Stage will present
a programme of solution- and useroriented
presentations and panel
discussions along the LIGNA focus topics
as well as recruiting and sustainability.
These talks will be streamed online as
well.
LIGNA 2023 Preview
LIGNA 2023 has announced that as of February
2023, over 105,000m 2 of the exhibition space is
booked and more than 1,100 exhibitors have
booked their stands, with reportedly 180 firsttime
exhibitors.
In addition to companies from Germany, firms
from Italy, Austria, Turkey, Spain, China, Sweden,
Slovenia, Denmark and the Netherlands account
for the largest proportion of exhibitors by area.
TRENDS
LIGNA will continue to explore key trends in the
woodworking industry. This year, the biannual
woodworking trade show will present talks
surrounding digitisation, bioeconomy, and
prefabrication.
Under the title ‘Woodworking Transformation’,
LIGNA 2023 will explore how digitisation is
shaping the industry’s development and has
become a prerequisite for production that
should be as resource efficient as it should be
flexible.
Exhibitors will show how far the networking of
machines, tools, components and materials has
gone and present innovations in the fields of
robotics, automation and software.
The trade show will also explore how
wood has become an important renewable
raw material as a pillar of the circular
bioeconomy.
On display will be development lines of the
wood-based bioeconomy and technological
innovations for the responsible use of
natural resources, as well as process
technologies for shaping chemically
digested wood fibres.
Under the topic of ‘Prefab Building
Processes’, LIGNA 2023 will explore wood as
an increasingly important building material
in the construction industry.
More specifically, the trade show will
explore solutions and approaches that
will spearhead the future of timber
construction, as the prefabrication and onsite
construction sector needs a technology
boost to produce in a contemporary and
efficient manner.
There will also be guided tours where in
groups of 25, interested parties will be
guided to selected exhibitors and given
presentations and live demonstrations
directly at their stands. The guided
tours will also be available online, ondemand.
In view of the shortage of skilled workers
and concerns about young talent, LIGNA
also provides an overview of research,
education and career opportunities in
the woodworking and wood processing
industry through the LIGNA.Campus.
"LIGNA offers a unique overview of the
entire value chain of the woodworking
and wood processing industry. It is the
international showcase for innovations
and the stage for world firsts. We have
been receiving a wave of euphoria from
the community ever since planning
began. The industry is looking forward to
the face-to-face experience in Hannover,"
concluded Dr Jochen Köckler, CEO of
Deutsche Messe.
LIGNA 2023 will commence from 15-19
May, at Hannover, Germany. P
14 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

NEWS
HENKEL APPOINTS NEW MANAGEMENT
BOARD MEMBER AND EXECUTIVE VP
FOR ADHESIVES BUSINESS
Effective 1 Feb 2023, Mark Dorn, currently
Henkel’s senior vice-president responsible for
the Adhesive Technologies business unit in
Asia-Pacific, will be appointed executive vicepresident
and member of the management
board responsible for the Adhesive
Technologies business unit.
He will succeed Jan-Dirk Auris, who will leave
the company at the end of January 2023 after
around 35 years of service.
“We are pleased that Mark Dorn will be leading
our Adhesive Technologies unit in the future,”
said Dr Simone Bagel-Trah, chairwoman of
the supervisory board and shareholders’
committee of Henkel.
“He has broad and long-term experience in
international industrial businesses and knows
the Adhesive Technologies business unit,
our businesses, and customers very well.
At the same time, he brings a wide range of
experience from other leading companies
in the chemical industry to his new role.”
Dorn started his career at Henkel in
1992. At Cognis, the spin-off of Henkel’s
chemicals division at the end of 1999,
he held various management positions
including sales and supply chain,
marketing, and strategy.
In 2010, he left Henkel, but returned in 2019
and has since been responsible for the
entire Adhesive Technologies business in
Asia-Pacific and globally for the craftsmen,
construction and professional business
area. He also serves as president for Henkel
in Asia-Pacific.
Mark Dorn, the new executive vice-president and
member of the management board for Henkel’s
Adhesive Technologies business unit (Image: Henkel)
Henkel CEO Carsten Knobel added: “I am
looking forward to working with Mark Dorn and
I am confident that he, together with the global
leadership team of Adhesive Technologies, will
leverage the global leading market position of
this business unit to further increase its growth
and profitability in the coming years.” P
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Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 15

MARKET REPORT
The inevitable
By Judd Johnson, editor,
Hardwood Market Report Publications
times. The changes discussed in the
last several articles published in this
column did not have time to propagate
throughout the marketplace.
They have now.
What we know about the supply and
demand relationship is prices are
influenced by imbalances. There is
nothing about this that is unique to US
hardwood lumber, but who would not
agree that the ups and downs in prices
this past decade have been too frequent
and far too severe? Yet, this is the
situation. US hardwood lumber prices are
in the early stages of recovering previous
losses.
The extent US hardwood sawmill
production will contract or remain below
consumption is uncertain. But knowing
the nature of hardwood sawmills is
to operate at the highest production
capabilities possible, the constraint at
this time is a matter of prices. Profitability
is the purpose for business, and it is
the incentive for any manufacturer to
produce.
Hardwood lumber supplies available
to major US markets have decreased.
More specifically, grade hardwood
lumber supplies have decreased.
Grade lumber is used primarily in
appearance applications of consumer
wood products, such as furniture,
cabinets, millwork, and flooring. It
is, overwhelmingly, the quality of
hardwood lumber exported from the US
into world markets.
Clearly, this most recent decline in
US hardwood lumber supplies is
production-driven. The volume of new
lumber entering the marketplace fell
below the volume of lumber used by
secondary manufacturers worldwide.
Shifts in supplies are caused by changes
in input (new lumber entering the
marketplace), output (volume of lumber
consumed by end-using sectors), or any
combination of the two when increases
or decreases by one are greater than
those of the other.
Even then, the time element is extensive
for inventories to decrease after sawmill
production contracts. Months, in fact.
This is why information on sawmill
output of green lumber can seem
contrary to kiln dried supplies at given
These graphs are visual representations
of how the US hardwood industry has
undergone supply adjustments to
conform with demand, as well as how
demand for US hardwoods has changed
over time. There are stories behind each
line movement — too many to discuss
in this article — but the increases and
decreases that are shown could be
representative of business experiences
with US hardwoods.
Fig. 1 depicts total US hardwood lumber
supplies with demand. Keep in mind
two important considerations with this
graph: The volumes shown are numbers
cumulative for the year, without indicating
trend changes within the year, and the
differences between supply and demand
in this graph indicate inventory change.
16 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

MARKET REPORT
Fig. 2 tracks eastern US hardwood sawmill production and is shown
annualised on a monthly basis. If the volume produced in 2020 was
too low and contributed to price spikes, what might we expect of
supply and prices if production remains at the December 2022 and
January 2023 levels shown in the graph?
Fig. 3 is essentially an inventory and sales ratio that compares new US
hardwood lumber supplies to consumption by major US hardwood
lumber markets. The graph shows a deficit trend in supplies
beginning in H2 2022, with a sharper decrease in Q4.
Fig. 4 points out mostly consistent results in business from
industrial markets for US hardwood lumber and contracted demand
from the grade lumber group. Most changes in consumption
from grade lumber market sectors have come from declining US
manufacturing.
Fig. 5 outlines how exports of US hardwoods increased over time
before coming off record highs set in 2017. China has been a very
large part of export growth for US hardwoods and is vital still, but
China has dropped down in volumes imported from the US since
2017. P
Hardwood Market Report (HMR) is the leading source of pricing and
market information for North American hardwoods. It has provided
reliable, expert analysis of pricing and market trends to hardwood
companies throughout the world since 1922. Sample copies and
subscription services for HMR and all other HMR publications are
available online at www.hmr.com.
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 17

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
Communities at the
heart of sustainable
forestry in Guatemala
Early morning, before the sun
illuminates the vibrant colours of
nature, the journey to the Mayan
Biosphere Reserve (MBR) begins.
After a four-hour drive through Petén
in northern Guatemala, the Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) crew reaches
the official entrance of the reserve,
a vast gate that stands small against
the great wall of trees behind it. In the
surrounding area, cattle ranching and
illegal timber harvesting have already
destroyed the forest. The reserve is the
last stronghold against deforestation
and biodiversity loss.
As visitors step into the dense jungle,
sunbeams stream through a thick
canopy and the sounds of different
animal species ring out around
them. Magnificent trees towering
15-20m-tall, howler and spider
monkeys swinging through the
canopy, and a choir of bird sounds
welcome them to the largest
continuous protected area in central
America. Here, there is no internet
or mobile phone signal, resulting in
full, uninterrupted connection with
nature.
The guides, forest stewards from
the local community, smile broadly
when they see the crew admiring
their surroundings. They know every
inch of the forest and take pride in
being its guardians. The reserve is
their life, hope, identity, family, and
belonging.
FSC CERTIFICATION AND THE MBR
Forty years ago, Petén forests were
threatened by the increasing extractive
activity of the timber industry and cattle
ranchers, causing widespread concern
among local communities. In 1990 the
government of Guatemala created the
MBR to protect this area of natural and
cultural heritage for future generations.
Within the more than two million
hectares of forest protected by the
reserve, the authorities granted
community forest concessions, enabling
these communities to demonstrate that,
as a group, they could manage these
resources sustainably. Nowadays, nine
communities manage the concessions
and their FSC-certification, representing
more than 350,000 hectares of forest.
18 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
The guides take the crew to visit an area
known as quadrant D in Uaxactún, one
of the nine forest concessions, where
trees were harvested in 2014 and the
area is now regenerating. According
to community members, an average
of around 1.5 trees is extracted per
hectare every year in areas where there
are between 200-300 timber trees. The
targeted areas have cutting cycles of
30-40 years. This means that another
tree will not be extracted from quadrant D
until 2054.
Rubén Hernández, president of the
Management and Conservation Civil
Society in Uaxactún which safeguards
83,558 hectares, said: “The best trees
always stay in the forest.”
He explained that there are some
trees called ‘parent trees’ or seedbeds,
which are healthy trees identified for
protection. How does the community
recognise them? They said due to their
lushness and sturdiness, they have a
well-distributed crown, their trunks are
cylindrical, the roots are blight-free, and
they are not tilted, standing straight and
tall. They spread life, and their seeds can
travel up to 65m.
Aside from protected parent trees,
Hernández said that in Uaxactún,
around 11 species are extracted,
following FSC standards. It is important
that sustainable felling is not permitted
in all forest areas. In fact, trees can
only be extracted for wood in around
45% of the approved areas; the rest is
used for conservation or harvesting
non-timber forests products, like
xate, an ornamental leaf exported
to international markets for floral
arrangements.
CONSERVATIONIST MINDSET
Each community and its members have
a strong connection to their forest.
The hands of Jorge Soza, founding
member of community Forestry Services
Company (Forescom) and community
technician of the Association of Forest
Communities of Petén (Acofop), are
worn, aged from the force of the
machete and handling trees that have
sustained him and his family for 53
years. “All my life, I have lived from the
resources of the forest,” he said, sitting
on a table made of machinche — a type
of wood — while holding an aromatic
pepper seed in his palm.
“Culture is vital for community
development,” he asserted while
stressing the importance of passing
down knowledge and values to
future generations. He learned forest
management by example from his
parents, whom he remembers as
guardians of natural resources.
Later that day, Carlos Crasborn,
president of the Carmelita Cooperative,
a community founded 100 years ago
with 53,797 hectares of FSC-certified
forest in the heart of the MBR, shared
Soza’s reflections: “People were born,
grew up in the forest, and are now
living in it. We have always had a
conservationist vision.”
“The forest can be sustainably
managed,” assured Carlos Maldonado,
forestry commissioner of Árbol Verde
Civil Society. “Management is geared
towards thinking about our children
and grandchildren. We must make
sure that our work does not harm the
forest. FSC certification is a source of
pride and an unmistakable sign of good
environmental management of hectares
of land entrusted by the government.”
XATE AND WOMEN EMPOWERMENT
Cutting xate is another activity that
generates permanent resources for the
communities and has become crucial in
recent years.
This leaf, FSC-certified, is used all year
round, and has cutting cycles of around
three months. Xate goes through a
detailed and elaborate process divided
into five steps: selection, cutting,
quality control, packing, and tying up.
Approximately 80% of the men in the
community are involved in cutting
xate, and dozens of women oversee
other logistical processes before its
exportation, mostly to the US.
Legend
1 Women in the
MBR are active in
harvesting xate
2 Jorge Soza,
founding member
of community
Forescom, has
been conserving
the MBR for 53
years
1 2
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 19

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
Magdalena Peralta, project manager, shows a
xate leaf to the crew. For her, this plant is more
than ornamental; it is the “economical driving
force of the community”. She feels that leading
this vital project for the 800 inhabitants of
a centenary community is a sign of female
empowerment. It shows that women can be
actively involved and in charge of important
projects that benefit all.
3
“For me, Uaxactún is paradise,” she said
proudly. The communities have also started
the certifying process of other non-timber
forest products, such as pepper and rosemary.
According to Glyde Márquez Morales, sales
manager at Forescom, FSC certification
ensures proper forest management and
positions timber and non-timber products
in a better way on international markets. In
his experience, international markets such as
the US and Europe require forest products to
have FSC certification, which also means that
they can trade them with more competitive
prices.
4
ADDITIONAL FSC CERTIFICATION IMPACT
For more than 25 years, FSC standards have
ensured the conservation of the forest’s
ecosystem while generating economic and
social benefits to the communities. Currently,
less than 1% of forest fires impact the areas
managed by the communities, in contrast to
other areas at the MBR.
Additionally, among the 15,000 people that
live in the communities, child malnutrition
levels are lower, school attendance rates are
higher, and fewer people migrate to the cities.
There are also up to 11.28 jaguars per 100km²,
and the highest reported values of species are
spotted within the FSC-certified area.
The forest concessions in Petén are an
example of conservation, cohesion, and
development. They offer benefits not only to
the communities but also to the forest itself
and, of course, to the country. The MBR fosters
biodiversity while enabling communities to
live from the forest’s resources, which means
thriving forests for all, forever. P
Images: Ivan Castro/FSC
5
Legend
3 The gate into Mayan
Biosphere Reserve
4 Sustainable felling
is not permitted in
all forest areas, and
trees can only be
extracted for wood
in around 45% of the
approved areas
5 FSC certification has
helped to ensure the
conservation of the
forest’s ecosystem
while generating
economic and social
benefits to the
communities
This article was first published on FSC’s website and is reproduced
here with permission.
20 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

GLOBAL TIMBER
- EXPERTS IN HARDWOOD
Global Timber is a thriving international company with more than 40 years
of experience in the industry. The company headquarter and warehouse are
located in Denmark. Our Asian office is based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
with local representatives around South East Asia.
We trade African, American, and European hardwood
in logs, sawn timber, and more.
www.asia.globaltimber.net asia@globaltimber.net T +60 3 7610 2049

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
Towards a
circular economy
Almost 20 million tonnes of
furniture is thrown into landfills
every year in the EU and US.
Second, circulate materials and products
by optimising resource yields and designing
products specifically for remanufacturing,
refurbishing, and recycling, thereby keeping
components and materials in circulation.
Third, regenerate nature by fostering system
effectiveness and designing out ‘negative
external impacts’, such as reducing damage to
human utility, and managing externalities such
as land use, air, water, and noise pollution, the
release of toxic substances, and climate change.
The sector has a very low reuse rate, with just
10% of furniture waste recycled in the EU and
0.3% of furniture discarded at landfills in the US
recovered for use again. People recycle or reuse
mobile phones, laptops, TVs, clothes, kitchen
appliances, household plastic and glass waste,
packaging, and even food waste. So why not
recycle, reuse, or repurpose furniture? The world
is waking up to this problem, and as it does, the
role of certification systems like the Programme
for the Endorsement of Forest Certification
(PEFC) will become more crucial.
Part of why consumers and businesses have
been slow to adopt widespread recycling
of furniture is because furniture is often not
manufactured or sold with recycling in mind.
This can be true not only for modular fast
furniture but also for more expensive, singlesource
hardwood pieces. Often, people see
furniture as meeting specific and therefore
limited needs, rather than being something
that can be repurposed. A survey by the British
Heart Foundation revealed that one-third of the
people surveyed threw away still-functional
furniture rather than selling or donating it. Some
respondents reported that even though they
wanted to donate their furniture, they did not
know how.
and continues today. However, this pattern
is not sustainable. It is time to reconsider
how to source, make, purchase, and dispose
of furniture. The good news is that there is a
solution to this problem.
WHAT IS CIRCULARITY?
In line with the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDG) of the UN 2030 Agenda, experts
increasingly see circular economies as a
viable way to address the waste problem. The
circular economy is a model of production
and consumption that stops waste from being
produced in the first place and mimics the
natural world’s approach to waste management,
in which waste from one process becomes raw
inputs for another. Also known as closed-loop
systems, the circular economy aims to preserve
natural resources and reduce potential waste
by substituting products with services, such
as rental, licensing, or buyback schemes, and
designing products to be used over and over
again. This can include making them modular,
easier to disassemble and repurpose, which
extends the product lifecycle. It is an approach
that keeps waste to a minimum by maintaining
materials from recycled and repurposed
products in the economy as long as possible.
That also creates additional value.
While that all sounds ideal, how does that
translate into meaningful action in the furniture
industry? There are many opportunities for the
furniture value chain to become more circular.
For example, Furniture as a Service (FaaS)
subscription models are being trialled to cater
to the nomad-like lifestyles of millennials, who
tend to move residences often. On the design
side, modularity is increasingly capturing
the attention of furniture makers, who make
pieces that are easy to disassemble, reuse, and
recycle.
Adopting circular economy principles towards
furniture does not mean starting over from
scratch. Six key cycles can be followed to make
furniture more circular:
Maintain: Regular maintenance of existing
furniture goes a long way. This can include
adding a layer of oil, varnish, or wax to a bed
frame to prolong its life.
Repair: Making corrections or adjustments
when needed, like fixing the broken leg of a
chair.
This is striking given that people all know how
to recycle glass, paper, and aluminium cans.
But there is a dearth of messaging on recycling
for furniture, and so off the discarded desk
goes to the dump. This is an example of the
‘linear approach’ or the ‘take, make, and waste’
paradigm. Everybody takes materials from the
earth, makes products from them, and then
disposes them as waste. It is a familiar pattern
that has underpinned the expansion of global
economies since the industrial revolution
For a more formal definition, the EU and the
Ellen McArthur Foundation have established the
circular economy as being built on three main
principles:
First, eliminate waste and pollution and preserve
and enhance natural capital by, for example,
selecting required natural resources wisely,
and choosing technologies and processes that
use renewable or better-performing resources
wherever possible.
One way to contribute to the circular economy is by
optimising resource yields and designing products
specifically for remanufacturing, refurbishing, and
recycling
22 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
Reuse: Giving furniture a second life
through a change in ownership — be
it a dresser passed down as a family
heirloom, furniture sold or donated
through an online platform like eBay,
or simply giving to a charity or secondhand
organisation.
Refurbish: Altering or remanufacturing
older furniture, such as refitting or
reupholstering a sofa.
Repurpose: Changing the intended use
of a piece of furniture, such as resizing a
table into a desk.
Recycle: Recovering valuable and useful
components of end-of-life discarded
furniture and using these components
in new products.
When furniture owners find ways to
extend the lifecycle of furniture, when
designers prioritise ease of disassembly
and reuse, and when manufacturers
source raw materials from sustainable
sources, the furniture industry can
achieve true circularity.
WHO BENEFITS FROM CIRCULAR
ECONOMY?
With more than two-thirds of global
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
linked to materials management, a
transition to a more circular economy
can substantially contribute to meeting
climate targets as outlined in the Paris
Agreement. In fact, if the 194 member
countries of the Paris Agreement adopt
comprehensive circular solutions to
their economies, it could remove 26
billion tonnes of greenhouse gases from
the atmosphere, and improve chances
of avoiding a 2°C global temperature
increase.
The increased global demand for lowcost
timber products has also placed
enormous pressure on the world’s
forests. Illegal logging, a multi-billiondollar
industry, is a primary factor in
deforestation, especially in tropical
regions. By degrading biodiversity
and forests’ economic value, forest
exploitation makes land even more
vulnerable to deforestation for other
uses, such as conversion for agricultural
purposes. Almost half the land that is
converted annually is illegally cleared,
which in turn removes important carbon
sinks and havens for biodiversity, and
denies forests the chance to supply
strategically important renewable
materials, such as wood.
In a circular system, the demand for
raw, natural resources from certified
sustainable and renewable sources will
grow significantly. This shift towards
responsibly sourced natural resources
will additionally have the positive
impact of shrinking the market for wood
from unknown and potentially illegal
sources, with certified sustainable
timber meeting higher consumer
1
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 23

ENVIRONMENTAL REPORT
expectations and stricter regulatory
standards.
resource retention. It is a cycle, and it
works.
But circular systems are good for
more than just forests. A study
commissioned by McKinsey
Sustainability in partnership with
the Ellen McArthur Foundation
estimated that a circular approach in
the EU could boost Europe’s resource
productivity by 3% by 2030, generating
cost savings of €600bn a year and
€1.8tn more in other economic
benefits. A circular economy allows
value recovery, economic growth,
and job creation, fostering subindustries
like small-to-medium sized
repair, refurbishment, recycling,
and remanufacturing businesses. In
independent modelling, the European
Environment Bureau estimates that if
EU member states adopt the circular
economy in full, almost 160,000
additional jobs can be created.
There are already positive examples of
circularity in action within the furniture
industry. Berliner Stadtreinigung, the
municipal waste department of Berlin,
has opened an entire department
store that sells discarded furniture.
The store relies on a collection scheme
via donations from local residents.
This model may also pose a potential
remedy for waste in metropolitan
areas, as furniture constitutes the
second-highest portion of urban waste
in American cities.
PEFC’S ACTION
The PEFC believes that all have a role
to play in shifting from a wasteful,
unsustainable linear system of
production and consumption towards
a more sustainable future for the
planet, and it starts with the source.
Using raw, responsibly sourced
natural materials will be critical for the
transition towards a circular economy.
Wood can be sourced from renewable
sources, turned into a product,
reused, and at the end of its lifecycle,
recycled. The journey of a tree, from
felling to end of life, offers numerous
opportunities for value creation and
The challenge is sourcing those
materials sustainably. With 3 billion
more middle-class consumers expected
globally by 2030, growing resource
demands could place even more
pressure on forests if they are not
managed sustainably. PEFC, with its
bottom-up, local approach, supports
independent forest owners to gain
sustainable forest management
certification to prove that wood from
their forests has been harvested with
respect for the highest ecological, social,
and ethical standards. PEFC sustainable
forest management certification ensures
that forests can remain secure sources
of renewable materials in a number of
ways:
By maintaining or increasing forests
and their ecosystem services, and
maintaining or enhancing the economic,
ecological, cultural, and social values of
forest resources.
By safeguarding the capacity of the
forest to store and sequester carbon in
the medium and long terms, through
balancing harvesting and growth rates.
By encouraging climate-positive
practices in management operations,
such as GHG emission reductions and
efficient use of resources.
And finally, by ensuring that the
harvesting levels of both wood and
non-wood forest products do not exceed
a rate that can be sustained in the long
term, and that the harvested products
are optimally used.
Sustainable forestry systems can
help the transition towards a
circular economy, pursuant to the
UN 2030 SDGs, and meet growing
global demands for forest products.
Responsible sourcing of materials from
renewable sources is the first element in
the closed-loop approach to waste, and
indeed a circular economy cannot be
achieved without it.
In addition, PEFC chain-of-custody
(CoC) certification allows timber
suppliers and producers to track
certified products throughout the
value chain, from the forest to the
furniture store, and prove that
their wood comes from legal and
sustainable sources. CoC certification
also allows for the recognition of
recycled materials bearing the PEFC
Recycled label or PEFC Certified
label. This is part of PEFC’s inclusive
approach to circularity, which
sees recycling and certification of
virgin timber as complementary
approaches that can sustain forests
and meet market demands for wood
and wood-based products. Inclusive
approaches like this will be essential
for the transition towards a circular
economy.
FORESTS ARE HOME
Through Forests Are Home, PEFC is
bringing wood suppliers, furniture
manufacturers and designers
together to demonstrate that effective
partnerships in the furniture supply
chain can lead to a brighter future for
the world’s forests.
When furniture manufacturers
choose certified wood, when retailers
choose certified sources, when
customers choose certified furniture,
everybody can help to potentially
safeguard the world’s forests and
ecosystem, and contribute to healthy
local communities, local workers,
and the local economy. P
Images: INTOS
INTOS is another
example of how
various companies
are starting to adopt
circularity. The
interior solutions
specialist produces
durable furniture
which can be reused
after its end of life
24 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

IN PERSON
Unpacking domestic and
global furniture trends
with HOMAG Asia
From mass customisation to the fifth industrial revolution,
Wolfgang Neeser and Lorenzo Marcaccioli, respective
managing director and sales director of HOMAG Asia, share with
Yap Shi Quan about current furniture trends in Asia and across
the world, and how the company is responding to these trends.
The DRILLTEQ H-308, which comes
with a H-310 variant for consumers
seeking automatic solutions
Malaysia. Neeser explained that every country
has its own export and domestic markets, and
different countries have different priorities. For
instance, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia are
huge exporters of furniture, each boasting their
own furniture manufacturing capabilities, while
Singapore, the Philippines and Taiwan prioritise
their own domestic markets. Understanding this
is key to understanding how to approach the
country.
Big furniture trends are always shaped by
market demand: If consumers want something,
the industry answers it. To understand what is
trending or not, businesses would have to listen,
interpret and analyse what their customers
want.
HOMAG Asia, with their footprint across
various Asian countries, has the capacity to
do that. In fact, according to Marcaccioli, the
manufacturer of woodworking machinery
aims to be as close to their local markets as
possible. This includes recently expanding
their factory in Shanghai, China, building
a new warehouse and factory in India, and
establishing an Asia-Pacific hotline for faster
communication and more efficient after-sales
service with regional customers.
“One of our missions at HOMAG Asia is to get
information from our established markets,
understand what our customers need, and
transfer this information to our research and
development and factories,” Marcaccioli said to
Panels & Furniture Asia.
DOMESTIC TRENDS
Asia is not a homogenous region, spanning
the likes of big markets like China and India, to
smaller yet influential ones like Vietnam and
However, there are common trends that Neeser
and Marcaccioli see emerging across Asia or
South East Asia. For instance, there has been
an increasing demand for flexibility in furniture
production over the last few years. Traditionally
in South East Asia, businesses tended towards
big batches of furniture production, or mass
production. But HOMAG Asia has noticed
that their customers are requesting for more
flexibility in their machinery. In other words,
their customers want more customisation, and
the ability to produce smaller batches but at a
faster rate.
“For HOMAG, we are quite lucky in the sense that
we already experienced this in other parts of the
world. Our products, software, and machinery
development therefore already answer to the
customer demands of flexibility in Asia,” said
Marcaccioli.
For instance, HOMAG is presenting their
DRILLTEQ H-308 and H-310 in China at the
upcoming interzum Guangzhou in March 2023.
26 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

IN PERSON
The six-sided drilling machine offers flexibility
for high variant diversity as well as efficiency
— the H-308 variant is tailored specifically for
Asian markets, while the H-310 variant adds an
automatic feeder, and can be connected to a
fully automatic line. HOMAG will be presenting
“an automatic cell with the H-310 variant”
during the tradeshow.
This step away from mass production and
towards mass customisation corresponds to
an increasing number of customers wanting to
fit-out their homes — a trend that has intensified
over the last two years because of the pandemic,
with people cocooning at home, and a trend
that also affects countries that are domestic
market-oriented.
“People want to fit-out their houses to their
likings, their needs, and customise it. I think
this is the big trend that our customers face,
especially the ones that deal more with
domestic orders,” Neeser clarified. “And this
is being enhanced by software and online
platforms that give customers choices and
opportunities to play around with furniture
designs, such as virtual reality (VR).”
ADVANCED MANUFACTURING
It remains a fact, however, that South East Asia
is still relatively slow in picking up Industry 4.0
solutions. Mass customisation and digitalisation
— which are key aspects of Industry 4.0 — still
need a “longer runway” for South East Asian
manufacturers to pick up because of the region’s
tendency to rely on manual labour rather than
automatic solutions.
But that does not mean South East Asian
manufacturers are not open to the idea of
Industry 4.0. If there are customers who want
their manufacturing processes to be more
advanced, HOMAG Asia will be there to help.
Neeser added: “We have had some success
with customers in our countries who are open
to adapt to Industry 4.0. Now the question is:
What happens to the rest of the customers? Are
they willing and able to adapt, or what needs to
happen for them to jump onto the bandwagon?”
Industry 5.0 is based on the principle of
“human-centric, sustainable strategy”. The
catch about Industry 5.0 is it has already been
practised by various industries and many
firms, although it has never been formally
called Industry 5.0 until recently. And HOMAG
is one of them, having anticipated it years ago.
Business concepts such as ESG, CSR, Triple
Bottom Line, are all aspects of Industry 5.0, all
of which demand firms to contribute to societal
well-being and put consumers at the forefront
of their business strategy.
Marcaccioli elaborated: “Since years ago, we
developed our machines with high levels of
safety, and we produced machines with ecoPlus
functions to reduce their electrical and energy
consumption.” Currently, HOMAG’s machines
with ecoPlus functions use up to 30% less
energy consumption in some applications. 1
“More recently, we founded a new division
called Construction Elements Support (CES),
related to machinery and solutions for the
wood housing industry, that aims to match the
principles of ESG as well.”
To further improve their ESG performance,
HOMAG has also reduced their factory
emissions by 31% over the last nine years,
and plans to reduce the factory emissions
further to 70% by 2030. Additionally, they
plan on developing new machines, fitted with
new devices that can reduce at least 15% of
emissions when using them.
PIVOTING TO CONSUMER DEMAND
Industry 5.0 is almost an unheard-of concept
in Asia, and will likely not be adopted any soon
while businesses are still adapting to Industry
4.0 solutions. Even then, Neeser believes that
manufacturers will have to pivot to Industry
5.0 or human-centric production, or they
might face difficulties keeping up with other
businesses that have already taken the first
steps. After all, the market moves according to
consumer demand.
HOMAG will therefore continue to monitor
local markets closely, cater to their needs, all
while improving their after-sales services to
make sure any new machines introduced will
be adequately supported on remote servers.
As Neeser put it: “We will continue taking their
feedback to the product management and due
departments, so they can have products that
fit the market, rather than taking European
markets and trying to adapt them somehow to
local market needs.”
Besides advanced manufacturing trends,
HOMAG Asia is also keeping tabs on market
developments. Neeser wonders if the China
Plus One strategy, where various manufacturing
industries are avoiding putting all of their
resources in China alone and aiming to diversify
elsewhere, will affect the furniture industry as
much as it has affected other manufacturing
industries. Some furniture businesses have
already migrated out of China and into Vietnam.
But if the impact of China Plus One on the
furniture industry gets any stronger, it might
shift HOMAG’s customer landscape — though all
of this is, of course, still speculation. P
References
1. HOMAG. ecoPlus – Technology that pays off.
And as South East Asia grapples with Industry
4.0, there have been slow but emerging
discussions around the world about the
upcoming fifth industrial revolution, also
known as Industry 5.0. According to Marcaccioli,
The SAWTEQ B-320
will also be displayed
during interzum
Guangzhou 2023
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 27

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT
Slim area grippers
for wood processing
1
According to Schmalz, the new FXP-60
and FMP-60 measure just 60mm-wide in
contrast to their previous 130mm-wide
generation, making them ideal for uses
in tight spaces, with interfering contours
for single-beam handling. The slimness
does not affect performance. An energyefficient
multi-stage ejector sits on top
of the FXP-60, ensuring low running
costs and high operational reliability.
The FMP-60 variant is designed for an
external vacuum generator.
HOW IT WORKS
The new FXP- or FMP-60 are lightweight
with their modular design consisting of
an aluminium profile with sealing foam
as the gripping surface. This enables
high dynamics in the handling process.
Furthermore, the FXP- or FMP-60 are not
picky when it comes to the dimensions
or pickup position of the workpiece, in
spite of their narrow width. With the
integrated flow restrictor technology,
the minimum degree of coverage is 50%.
This means leakage loss is minimised
due to uncovered suction cells.
Thus, even workpieces with recesses
should be of minimal difficulty for the
new grippers, as claimed by Schmalz.
This also makes FXP- or FMP-60 suitable
for swivelling operations and high
accelerations.
While the width is set, the customer can
specify the length individually in 18mm
increments. The minimum is 316mm
for the FMP-60 variant and 388mm
for the FXP-60 version with integrated
vacuum generator. The maximum is
1,972mm.
2
Legend
1 The new FXPand
FMP-60
2 The new area
grippers measure
60mm-wide, which
makes them ideal
for uses in tight
spaces
Manufacturer of automatic vacuum
and ergonomic handling systems
Schmalz has launched a series of
slim vacuum area gripping system
for wood processing.
Currently, the FXP- or FMP-60 are sold
worldwide. Ideal areas of application
are the automated handling of plastic,
sheet metal, glass and wood materials,
as well as in intralogistics. The area
grippers can be used to grip house
construction elements, or narrow
workpieces. It can be fixed onto
through-feed saws as well, or plunged
into roller conveyors. P
Images: Schmalz
28 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT
Comfort Core:
Upgrade in sound and
walking comfort for flooring
Unilin Technologies and Pelican Creations
Home have developed the Comfort Core
technology, which aims to achieve the
quietest stone plastic (SPC) flooring in the
flooring market, combining optimal ratios
of vinyl, pad, and SPC core to upgrade the
sound characteristics of the floor while
improving the ergonomics and walking
comfort.
Currently, the Comfort Core technology
can be bought all over the world. In a
press release by Unilin, manufacturer
Jiangsu Success and distributing
companies Wego International Floors
and Goodfellow have started production
and sales of floors installed with the
Comfort Core technology. Koopmans
assured that the technology can be
made with pre-existing machinery,
which means there will be no additional
investment needed for manufacturers.
Also, manufacturers can determine the
ideal mix between the hardness of the
top layer and softness of the cushion
layer, so they can comply with and
tailor the floor specifications to the
expectations of their customers. P
There are five layers to the Comfort Core
technology: The base being an ultrahigh-density
ethylene and vinyl acetate
(EVA) pad, followed by a rigid SPC core,
a soft cushion layer, a luxury vinyl tile
(LVT) with rigid back layer, and finally a
wear layer at the top. The new build-up
is furthermore designed with Unilin’s
locking technology, making it easy for
installation. The experience of walking
on a floor with Comfort Core technology
is akin to walking on carpet, since it
conforms to ISO standards for reflective
walking sound, and is the quietest type of
floor after carpet.
“The construction with the extra layer
of EVA padding allows an improved
soft and warm step, ideal for single and
multi-dwelling homes and condominium
living,” explained Floris Koopmans, sales
director at Unilin. “Comfort Core provides
users with a quiet, comfort-first feel with
every step. Now that many homes also
function as ‘offices’, the silence feature is
highly appreciated by end consumers.”
Walking comfort, ergonomics and sound are prioritised in Unilin’s Comfort Core technology
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 29

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT
NiRo collet chuck Premium
for long-term CNC
machining with shank tools
For example, the functionality of a
clamping device must be ensured
even under high air or material
humidity. After all, the machining
quality should remain permanently
and consistently high and the tool life
should be maintained at a maximum.
Tool breakage and thus damage to the
workpiece should also be prevented.
The NiRo collet chuck Premium
High-quality tool clamping technology
is necessary to ensure a high-quality
workpiece. The clamping device must
combine consistently high holding
forces with great precision. However,
these requirements are in the context of
increasingly complex work tasks, in which
the overall system of the clamping device
and tool must ensure high machining
results in the long term, even under difficult
production conditions.
CONCENTRICITY WITH HIGH
BALANCING QUALITY
Manufacturer of wood processing
tools Leitz has developed a new
clamping system with hollow shank
taper that combines high changing
repeat accuracy with flexibility and
durability. The NiRo collet chuck
Premium, made entirely of stainless
steel, ensures corrosion-free finishes
and precise, functionally reliable
tool clamping, even with high air and
material humidity.
To benefit from the advantages
of the HSK adapter in the NiRo
collet chuck Premium, Leitz has
attached importance to precision
and accuracy during production. The
high concentricity — of maximum
0.003mm — is therefore fine-balanced
to G2.5 at 25,000 revolutions per
minute. With a taper angle of 2°52’,
the OZ collet enables the transmission
of higher torques than an ER collet
with an 8° taper angle. The longer
taper length of the Niro Premium
also offers greater angular stability.
At the same time, the ball-bearing
clamping nut ensures low friction
losses between the nut and collet and
enables safe use in right-hand and
left-hand operations. In conjunction
30 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

PRODUCT HIGHLIGHT
Legend
1 By using different
collets, shank tools
in the range from
6-25mm can be easily
and precisely clamped
2 Niro collet chuck
Premium ensures
maximum holding
forces with an easy-toapply
torque of 80Nm,
and the slim contour
has a collisionpreventing
effect and
also enables work in
confined conditions
1 2
with the optimised trapezoidal thread and the
increased guide length, this ensures aboveaverage
holding forces with a comparatively
low tightening torque of 80Nm, according to
Leitz.
NEW KEY SYSTEM, SLIM CONTOUR
Depending on the application, the collets of
the premium chuck can be easily and quickly
changed to adapt to a variety of drills and
cutters, as claimed by Leitz. The available
collets cover the range from 6-25mm. With the
machine-side connection via the HSK-E-63
adapter, speeds up to a maximum of 24,000
revolutions per minute are possible. The
high concentricity and balance quality of
the Niro Premium ensure a long tool life and
high machining quality on the workpiece.
In addition, the collet chuck features a slim
design, which improves accessibility to the
workpiece and, due to the reduced interference
contour, allows optimised five-axis machining.
Leitz has also revised the Premium’s key system
for easy mounting of collets and tools. The
optimised key surfaces not only ensure safe
operation during clamping and releasing, but
the contour of the system is also up to 15%
slimmer than comparable chucks. P
Images: Leitz
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 31

PANEL MANUFACTURING
OSB
and its
variants
Compared to plywood and particleboard,
oriented strand board (OSB) is a
recent invention. Introduced in the
US as waferboard in the 1970s, the
original waferboard had a homogenous
composition of thin rectangular wood
flakes and was not developed as a
structural board. In contrast, today’s
OSB has greater rigidity and strength,
brought about by creative engineering
and orienting the flakes differently. When
moisture resistance was added to OSB, it
became a real competitor to plywood.
Global capacity for OSB rose from less
than 20 million m³ in 1996 to 32 million m³
in 2015. The increase was driven primarily
by Europe, which saw a jump from
less than 1 million m³ in 1996 to over
7 million m³ in 2015. Dramatic growth in
recent years came mostly from eastern
Europe. Still, more than two-thirds of
the global OSB capacity comes from the
US, where OSB was created.
In the US, OSB is commonly used in
the construction of commercial and
residential buildings, typically in wall
and roof planking and flooring. Due
to the board’s mechanical properties
and moisture resistance, OSB is used in
either dry or humid areas as a loadbearing
and even high load-bearing
board. While many OSB plants in the US
today use multi-opening presses, the
continuous production process for OSB
is more common elsewhere. The typical
board thickness range is about 6-40mm,
and the raw density is approximately
550-700kg/m³.
Originally, only logs were used to
produce OSB, but today OSB can
be produced from a variety of raw
materials, giving manufacturers
flexibility. Apart from fresh spruce,
poplar, eucalyptus, pine or birch wood
logs, non-log raw materials include
dwarf timber, off-cuts, slabs, recycling
wood, cable drums or pallets. Raw
material choice is just the beginning of
OSB’s flexibility, however.
OSB VARIANTS
In recent years, manufacturers of
complete wood-based panel plants
have worked with panel producers
worldwide to develop OSB variants
with unique properties and advantages
for unique applications. Dieffenbacher
from Eppingen, Germany, was active
from OSB’s earliest days and today is an
international OSB plant manufacturer.
Between 1974-1989, Dieffenbacher
supplied eight multi-opening presses
for OSB production to the US and
Canada alone. In most cases, the
associated dryers, forming stations
and Flexoplan systems were delivered
by Schenkmann-Piel-Engineering
and Schenck Panel Production
Systems, which were later acquired by
Dieffenbacher. Many of these plants are
reportedly still in operation.
Some of the newly developed OSB
variants that panel producers can
choose from today are Fine OSB,
Container OSB and OSB with an
advanced or recycling wood core layer.
Fine OSB: OSB is an economical
alternative to plywood for almost every
application. OSB’s one limitation —
its poor laminating capability — was
resolved by Dieffenbacher technology
for the production of what is now known
as Fine OSB. In Fine OSB, the OSB core
layer is covered top and bottom by
layers of particleboard to give a better
structure to the top surface. This makes
possible further processing according to
individual needs, including laminating
or coating on both sides with melamine
or phenolic paper in a short-cycle press.
Given the raw material’s lower cost, Fine
OSB presents an economical alternative
to plywood. It combines the robustness
of OSB with the surface quality of
particleboard.
OSB boards in a cooling wheel
The first plants to produce Fine OSB
were commissioned in 2015. Fine OSB
32 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

PANEL MANUFACTURING
quickly became popular, especially in China. After two
years of optimising the concept, Chinese authorities
established a standard Fine OSB for the entire country.
Subsequently, Dieffenbacher received further orders
for Fine OSB plants. To date, Chinese manufacturers
have already placed 10 orders for Fine OSB plants with
Dieffenbacher.
Container OSB: The floor of an ocean freight container
is subject to major stresses. It has to transport heavy
loads through all kinds of climate zones over periods of
weeks or months. Previously, such demands could only
be met by plywood panels made from tropical hardwood
veneers, but these have steadily become scarcer and more
expensive. Container OSB offers a low-cost alternative.
By replacing the central veneers of plywood with an OSB
core, the consumption of costly tropical timber can be
reduced.
1
Because the strength requirements of OSB core board
are greater than for commercially available OSB board,
Dieffenbacher developed a new manufacturing process.
Longer OSB strands are first sorted by new disc screens
and then arranged crosswise in a precise, multilayer
formation. Next, a specially designed press compresses
the mat, enabling a much denser panel. Following
compression, the OSB cores are brought together with
glued veneers on a veneer lay-up station and processed in
a hot press to produce Container OSB.
In the future, it may be possible to manufacture OSB
boards with unprecedented strength, without relying on
additional veneers. This has already been achieved on a
laboratory scale. Successful practical testing could pave
the way for container floor manufacturers to dispense with
the use of tropical veneers.
2
OSB with an advanced core layer: This version of
OSB has traditional OSB surface layers and a core layer
using cheaper, lower quality or readily available wood
assortments. The physical and mechanical properties are
comparable to conventional OSB. To produce OSB with an
advanced core layer, only the preparation of the core layer
material has to be adapted. The strand preparation for
surface layers remains unchanged, and the entire material
flow is comparable to conventional OSB production.
OSB with an advanced core layer gives panel producers
the flexibility to use inexpensive raw materials such as
macro chips, short logs, branches, industrial or recycling
wood and residual wood from sawmills, without
compromising board quality. Especially when using
recycling wood, this type of OSB helps reduce costs
and simultaneously contribute to sustainability and
environmental and climate protection. P
3
Legend
1 Production of Fine OSB
in a continuous press
2 Container OSB
3 OSB with an advanced
core layer
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 33

PANEL MANUFACTURING
Optimal
sanding
of all sides:
New sanding
line by Destefani
Sanding solutions manufacturer
Destefani has launched a
16.5m-long line consisting of 12
sanding units for the four-sided
sanding of wooden panels.
450mm, ensuring as much flexibility, quality
and productivity as possible.
Alessio De Stefani, technical sales manager
of the Destefani brand, said: “Our sanding
line is perfect for sanding profiles and
flat elements and allows you to obtain
a perfect sanding on all four sides. This
line was installed by a well-known Polish
manufacturer of children’s bedrooms,
meeting all requirements and guaranteeing
an excellent quality finish combined with
rapid and precise processing.”
THE SANDING LINE
The new sanding line, 16.5m-long and
weighing a total of 7,600kg with 12 working
units — which can be increased to 14 at the
customer’s request — is made up of three
successive machines.
The first machine is the B2-200 sander,
composed of two units for the lower
sanding of flat elements: a CTI100x unit for
transversal sanding and a CTI200 unit for
longitudinal sanding. The B2-200 has a thick
metal structure and weighs about 1,600kg.
The new complete sanding line by Destefani,
a firm that specialises in sanding solutions, is
ideal for sanding all four sides of solid wood
elements in a single pass. Specifically, it is ideal
for finishing elements of furniture, profiles,
jambs, architraves, and door and window parts,
and it can process workpieces that have a width
between 30-200mm and a minimum length of
The second machine is the MVT 6000 large
sander that sands the workpiece at the top
and left side. It is made up of six sanding
units: a CTS100x unit for upper transversal
1
1
34 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

PANEL MANUFACTURING
sanding, a CTL100x unit for lateral transversal
sanding, a CTS200 unit for upper longitudinal
sanding, two AT100 units for sanding straight
or shaped parts, and an SB100 unit, a brush
honing unit or an abrasive wheel honing
unit suitable for super-finishing, satin
finishing and brushing of sanded surfaces. If
necessary, a seventh unit can be added.
The third machine that makes up the new
line is the MVT 4000/2 sander with a mobile
base that houses four sanding units. The
first unit is the CTL100x, which is used
for transversal sanding of the side of the
workpiece. Then there are two AT100 units
for the smoothing of straight or shaped parts,
and lastly, the SB100 brush unit carries out
super-finishing, satin finishing and brushing
operations on the sanded surfaces, to
complete the machining of the workpiece in
an optimal way.
All in all, the units installed in the new
Destefani sanding line consists of: a CTS100x
upper transversal unit; a CTS200 upper
longitudinal unit; a SB100 ‘Scotch Brite’ unit;
a CTL100x side transversal unit; a CTI200
lower longitudinal unit; and lastly, a CTI100x
lower transversal unit.
“The first machine smooths the underside
of the piece loaded into the line, the second
machine carries out finishing of the upper
part and one side, and the third machine
does the second side and adds the ‘final
touch’ to the entire profile,” explained
De Stefani. “This is therefore a complete line
that can be fitted with additional units at
the customer’s request to form a completely
modular and tailor-made sanding station.”
P
Legend
1 Destefani’s new sanding line
2 The SB100 brush honing unit or an abrasive
wheel honing unit, suitable for super-finishing,
satin finishing and brushing of sanded surfaces
3 The infeed area
4 The CTS200 unit for upper longitudinal sanding
4
2
3
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 35

PANEL MANUFACTURING
Inspecting digital and
gravure decorated CPL
with Baumer technology
The ColourBrain CPL 4.0 is an
inspection system developed by
Baumer Inspection for the hybrid
manufacturing of continuous
pressure laminate (CPL) decorated
digitally and in gravure. The
features of both manufacturing
worlds are combined in one system
and can reportedly detect every
significant deviation. Furthermore,
with improved evaluation of the
overlay paper, even minor, weakly
visible defects can be detected
in decorations. A unique process
ensures that the actual decor,
as opposed to defects, is almost
completely suppressed.
With the FlashingSky evaluation
technology by Baumer and other
evaluation channels, process
defects such as bubbles, milkiness,
gloss deviations, breaks, cracks,
and decor particles which might be
also of the same colour as the actual
decor can be detected. The system
also detects typical digital printing
defects such as nozzle or printhead
failures.
Detected defects are directly
marked, alarmed and, if required,
recorded in a roll log. This enables
the press operator to identify and
reduce causes of process-related
defects. Conversely, the roll log
can enable the operator to remove
defective areas in a targeted manner
in later process steps, such as during
the cutting stage.
INTUITIVE USER INTERFACE
The CPL 4.0 system features a new,
36 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

PANEL MANUFACTURING
Production overview on the dashboard with the defect map and related
defects and statistics
intuitive touch user interface.
The Baumer Dashboard
provides an overview of the
current production. Inspection
results with defect logs as well
as production statistics are
displayed scalable in different
zoom levels over different
production sections, from
a single to several hundred
running meters.
TEMPLATES FOR SIMPLIFIED
DATA MANAGEMENT
By using templates, Baumer
Inspection aims to create
order and clarity in product
data management. Similarly
structured products are
grouped together so that
suitable inspection settings
do not have to be found for
hundreds or thousands of
different CPL items, but only
with a handful of templates.
SYSTEMATIC COMPARISON
The ColourBrain CPL 4.0
system is ready for Q-Live,
a Baumer database for the
statistical analysis of defect
types and frequencies.
This enables consistent
data management for the
systematic comparison of
several CPL 4.0 systems in a
plant or group, thus ensuring
that the same article is
assessed with the same criteria at
different lines or locations.
SHORTENED COMMISSION AND
MAINTENANCE TIMES
The CPL 4.0 systems are calibrated
and preset in a standardised
manner at Baumer so that
commissioning can be carried
out quickly and with the shortest
possible line downtime.
SELF-MONITORING
Operational reliability can be
achieved in the CPL 4.0 system
through self-monitoring functions
and the reporting of changes
such as temperature increases,
illumination losses, failure of
computers, cameras, luminaires or
deposits on luminaires or mirrors.
COOPERATION WITH BAUMER
GROUP
Baumer Inspection has followed
the strategy of developing and
manufacturing critical core
components such as cameras,
computers, illumination and
control modules in close
cooperation with resources in
the Baumer Group for years. This
pays off several times, especially
in current turbulent times: The
success can be accorded to the
control of supply chains and
adherence to promised delivery
dates. P
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 37

FURNITURE MANUFACTURING
Complex milling
implemented automatically
The BIMA Gx50 moving gantry machine
from IMA Schelling for machining door
surfaces (Image: IMA Schelling)
Doors give a room character: They can
determine the look of an apartment or
house. Blanke Türenwerke, a door and
door frame manufacturer based in Lower
Saxony, Germany, relies on the BIMA
Gx50 modular moving gantry machine
from IMA Schelling for machining the
surfaces of its wooden internal doors.
The machine makes it possible to give
the doors a unique design.
Doors with decorative grooves, doors with
vision panels, frame design doors, style doors,
and others: Blanke Türenwerke specialises in
manufacturing internal doors and door frames
with more than 100 years of market experience.
The company is based in the town of Bad Iburg
in south-west Lower Saxony, Germany, and
makes internal doors with decorative, continuous
pressure laminate (CPL) and white painted
surfaces.
In the past, Blanke relied on the BIMA Cx40
computerised numerical control (CNC) machining
centre from IMA Schelling for door frame
production for a long time. Its C-frame
construction allows the machine to process excess
lengths, offering freedom in how it is assigned.
However, Blanke began looking for a new
solution for door production. As explained by
Karsten Schlegel, head of the work preparation
department at Blanke: “Our door production
has moved to a new production hall. On this
occasion, we also took our old machining centres
out of service, thus creating space for the latest
machines.”
COMPLEX SURFACE MACHINING
The first question for Blanke was: Which machine
was suitable for machining surfaces? Their
requirements were also specific. “We had to
38 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

FURNITURE MANUFACTURING
1
3
implement vision panels, grooves and V-joints,
as well as milling recesses for ventilation grilles,
interior door closers and lock boxes,” said
Schlegel.
The door and door frame manufacturer received
advice from IMA Schelling Group specialists.
IMA Schelling specialises in the development
and production of modularised special systems
and processing solutions for the wood, metal
and plastics industries. For door production,
the group also offers its customers numerous
solutions and customised machines that can be
configured individually. The formats of the doors,
which can be up to 90mm-thick and 3,200mmlong,
pose special challenges to production
machines. This is why IMA Schelling offers units
with a motor rating of up to 30kW and plants with
machine lengths of up to 60m for this sector.
This competence, specifically in relation to
doors, was also crucial for Blanke. “Right from
the start, we were convinced by IMA Schelling’s
adherence to deadlines and ability to develop
solutions,” said Schlegel.
IMA Schelling therefore recommended the BIMA
Gx50, according to Dennis Reddig, product
manager at IMA Schelling. As a pass-through
CNC machine, the BIMA Gx50 took over the
earlier mentioned tasks that were not possible
on a classic pass-through machine, such as
milling operations for lock boxes, drilling
operations for edgebanding, milling operations
for interior door closers, milling and drilling
operations for handles and spyholes or multiple
locking mechanisms, as well as creating vision
panels or decorative surface features such as
decorative grooves.
INDIVIDUAL TOOL CHANGE CONCEPT
The BIMA Gx50 is a moving gantry machine
that is modular in structure and also suitable
for milling, gluing and laser edgebanding. For
the different types of machining demanded
by Blanke, the five-axis head developed by
IMA Schelling is used in combination with an
individually adjustable tool change concept.
This provides a range of options, from classic
tool change carousels for each spindle, to
fixed pick-up changers, to chain-type tool
changers which can access several spindles,
and combinations of several of these systems.
The solid gantry design of the CNC machine and
its rigid machine bed can ensure high process
reliability.
2
1 Complex milling
operations are also
possible with the
BIMA Gx50
(Image: IMA Schelling)
2 The intelligent suction
concept ensures
optimum cleaning of
workpieces (Image:
IMA Schelling)
3 Room doors with subtle,
decorative elements
are an adornment
for every dwelling
(Image: Blanke Türen)
The machine has been fitted with two
machining spindles, one four-axis and one fiveaxis
spindle, so that it can handle the set tasks
with optimised set-up times. Both spindles can
each carry out a tool change in parallel — that
is, while the other spindle is processing.
“The BIMA Gx50 represents the optimum
combination of high-quality mechanical
engineering and intelligent process control,”
emphasised Reddig. It can be connected to fully
automatic feeding and stacking systems, as well
as integrated into existing plants and existing
software and data landscapes.
INTELLIGENT SUCTION SYSTEM
When it came to plant planning and machine
commissioning, IMA Schelling supported the
customer as much as possible. “It was an
extremely constructive collaboration and our
specific requests were all taken into account,”
said Schlegel. “To start with, there were
some minor teething problems, which were
resolved very quickly, thanks to IMA Schelling’s
extremely competent service technicians, who
were always promptly on site.”
Blanke has been using the BIMA Gx50 moving
gantry machine since May 2020. According to
Schlegel, they were satisfied by the machine
because firstly, the moving gantry was mounted
on both sides, with the gantry design allowing
the two CNC-controlled feed motors to move
the gantry with precision and synchronised to
the angle. Secondly, there was the intelligent
suction concept, which aims to ensure
optimal cleaning of workpieces with minimal
installation work. The machine can currently
process about 20 doors an hour, and it is not yet
running at full capacity. P
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 39

FURNITURE MANUFACTURING
Q-Cut G6 Edition:
Finish-cut quality
with longer tool life
Supplier of carbide- and diamond-tipped woodworking tools
Leuco has introduced the Q-Cut G6 Edition, a new panel sizing
saw blade to meet demanding requirements for cut quality with a
long service life.
improved to H7. This makes it easier
to slide the saw blade onto the shaft.
In addition, the shape is non-round
instead of round, which results in
fewer points of contact between the
blade and the shaft, making it easier to
mount without jamming.
Q-Cut G6 Edition has
a longer tool life than
Q-Cut G6 by up to
two times (Image:
Leuco)
Woodworking shops now have an
alternative to the Q-Cut G6 at Leuco
as the standard blade for panel sizing.
The Q-Cut product family aims to
achieve the highest possible quality
in panel sizing saws. Within this
family, the Q-Cut G6 Edition is now the
standard in terms of service life. Leuco
reported that the new blade extends
the already long service life of the
standard Q-Cut G6 saw blade by up to
two times and more.
Leuco is able to improve the Q-Cut G6
with thinner blade bodies and greater
lateral tooth projection. This leads to an
optimised chip flow, and thus less chip
friction as well as less heating of the saw
blade. Improved grinding parameters
also contribute to high quality cutting
and longer tool life.
Another feature of the Q-Cut G6 Edition
is the improved precision class of
Leuco’s easyFix hole, which has been
Furthermore, the Q-Cut G6 Edition is
characterised by quiet and smooth
running. Six laser ornaments as well
as several expansion slots reduce
vibrations and thus also the running
noise of the saw blade. This saw
blade has a tooth group configuration
consisting of two stronger-cutting
leading teeth and four consecutive
teeth. This feature is common to all
panel sizing saw blades in the Q-Cut
family, which now consists of five
products: Q-Cut G5 for finish-cut
quality in plywood, veneered woodbased
materials, lightweight panels
and panels with sensitive top layers;
Q-Cut K for finish-cut quality in antifingerprint
materials and in plastics;
Q-Cut G6 for finish-cut quality with a
long tool life, and is thus especially
cost-effective; Q-Cut G6 No Noise which
is quiet, on top of typical Q-Cut G6
features; and lastly, the new Q-Cut G6
Edition.
The Q-Cut G6 Edition range includes
five sizes from 350-450mm in diameter.
According to Leuco, additional sizes are
currently being prepared. P
40 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

20 - 23 September 2023
JIEXPO Kemayoran Jakarta ▪ Indonesia
ifmac.net
BOOK
YOUR SPACE
NOW!

FURNITURE MANUFACTURING
Intelligent equipment and
customised software
offer competitive
production model
Established on 27 May 2019, Finsoft Intelligent
Technology provides complete solutions
for programme planning in the furniture
manufacturing industry — from automation
equipment, professional front-end design
and data processing to the overall planning of
information management systems in automated
factory production for furniture manufacturing
enterprises.
Finsoft also sells equipment from Nanxing
Machinery that has a long production line and
various products. They are able to offer clients
customised solutions. They can also assist
customers in upgrading traditional stand-alone
equipment to automated, intelligent and more
flexible connected production, thus helping
clients save labour cost, increase efficiency and
gain a competitive advantage.
from computer-aided design (CAD) to
computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and
mastering the advantages of automation to
achieve a customised, intelligent production
line. They carry out equipment planning,
design and integrate software according to
the customer’s production and process end
needs. The integrated intelligent software
will keep and update the data and products
in every channel, and systematically manage
quotation, monitor production progress and
organise inventory information to lower the
cost, enhance product yield rate and improve
work efficiency.
Secondly, Finsoft has a local service team that
can understand and prioritise customer needs.
They will dispatch engineers to the customer’s
site to assist in integration, optimisation,
online or remote real-time troubleshooting,
thereby improving service efficiency. This
immediate customer service can solve client’s
problems in one go, as claimed by Finsoft.
Thirdly, Finsoft delivers spare parts quicky
and at lower prices. Compared to the delivery
times of two to three months from foreign
equipment manufacturers, Finsoft has
real-time knowledge of their suppliers and
will feedback to them about the customer’s
problem immediately. They will dispatch
engineers to assist in replacing and adjusting
the equipment, to provide their clients
replacement of spare parts.
Finsoft provides customers with software
products from Guangzhou FinChinaSoft
Information Technology, including the process
design software Fin Design, the production
management system software Fin MES, order
management software Fin OMS, equipment
control software Fin CNC Controller, intelligent
production control software, intelligent
production line solutions, consulting services
and complete solutions.
Finsoft Intelligent Technology offers their
clients intelligent production line for the
entire factory. Firstly, they combine intelligent
machines and software, creating data flow
42 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

FURNITURE MANUFACTURING
Technological advancements and the rising
labour cost have required firms to replace
labour with machines, establish unmanned
automated factories, and assist customers to
transform from the traditional stand-alone
mode to a more efficient and cost-saving
intelligent production line by combining
intelligent machine and software, which
according to Finsoft is the wave of the future.
The industry will follow the trend of smallbatch,
diversified, customised production
in the future, and by combining intelligent
machines and software, clients will be able to
receive orders and offer quotations quickly,
integrate inventory information, and the
system will accurately grasp production status
and output quality.
From the front-end sales, Fin Design uses
woodworking software to design products
and get orders, and production files will
be generated. Production orders are
subsequently submitted into the Fin OMS
system, scheduled by the advanced planning
and scheduling (APS) system, and sent to the
Fin MES system for planned production. The
back-end of the product production process
is monitored and controlled in real-time to
ensure optimal quality. After the finished
products are included in the storage through
the warehouse management system (WMS)
system, a message will be integrated and
sent back to the Fin OMS system. From order
placing to inventory management, all the
steps are interlocked to check whether sales
goals are reached and to understand the
production line status.
Nanxing Machinery’s intelligent cutting
workstation, when cooperating with Finsoft’s
software, can connect from the edgebanding
machine and drilling workstation to the
finished product storage. The optimal
combination of cutting, edgebanding, drilling,
sorting, packaging, and storage via robots
builds an intelligent automated line. This
results in less labour cost and error rates
caused by labour, as well as less transfer time
in production and higher production output.
By using the intelligent supervisor system, the
entire production line, process flow, status
monitor, among others, can be controlled
via real-time interaction with machines,
robots and conveyor. Once the data in the
APS and MES systems is uploaded, the entire
Left images: Rendered designs with Fin Design software
workstation can be effectively driven, which
is monitored by the intelligent equipment
system to help customers establish more
efficient, cost-saving and product-optimised
automated production lines.
Industry 4.0 will bring a new chapter to the
manufacturing industry. Finsoft Intelligent
Technology will continue to improve their
product performances and develop new
products to fulfil the market’s needs, and to
Right images: Customer’s finished work
improve the equipment benchmark of panel
furniture enterprises so that the product
quality is comparable to international
advanced levels.
Nanxing Machinery and Finsoft Intelligent
Technology will exhibit at the upcoming
International Woodworking Machinery
Exhibition in Taipei Nangang Exhibition
Centre, held from 20-23 Apr 2023, at booth
B188.C68. P
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 43

MATERIALS
Sandwiched Variable
Eggcrate Structure:
Reconstituted timber
component for wall and
flooring use
Using mass timber in Singapore can be financially and
environmentally costly. Pan Yi Cheng, developer of Sandwiched
Variable Eggcrate Structure (SVES), a flooring and wall module
prototype made using reconstituted timber, believes that
reconstituted timber and prefabrication can be solutions.
By Yap Shi Quan
The construction industry is
responsible for a majority of global
greenhouse gas emissions. But even
within the industry, construction
of small residential houses or
shophouses contributes to a large
percentage of these emissions.
1
“If we want to lower the overall
emissions in the building industry,
we need to target the mass of the
building stock, which are residential
homes,” Pan Yi Cheng, a registered
architect and creative director of
Produce, told Panels & Furniture
Asia.
Mass timber can be one solution.
However, Singapore is not very
receptive to mass timber, which is
booming in popularity in western
countries, perhaps for good reason:
Adherence to EU building codes,
and the freight and shipping costs
of using European timber, add to the
already huge amount of resources
needed in construction. Additionally,
it is disallowed to use mass timber in
residential projects, unless there is a
sprinkler system installed — and that
adds even more expenses.
Aiming to address these issues, Pan An SVES floor component
can withstand up to 1.5kN
developed the Sandwiched Variable
of standing force
Eggcrate Structure (SVES), a flooring
and wall module that aims to replace
precast concrete floor slabs, built using
homogeneous reconstituted timber
(HRT) developed by Onewood.
44 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

MATERIALS
WHAT ARE SVES AND RECONSTITUTED
TIMBER?
As its name suggests, the SVES has an eggcrate
structure sandwiched in between two panels.
The eggcrate structure is formed using a mould
— made using a computerised numerical control
(CNC) machine — that presses laminated layers
of wood fibres into the eggcrate-like shape.
There are two types of SVES: The wall module
uses a single directional eggcrate structure that
allows conduits and wirings to pass through the
hollow space, and the flooring module uses a
double directional structure that allows higher
durability and strength. Currently, the SVES
withstands 1.5kN of standing force. Furthermore,
once fire retardant foam is pumped into the
hollow spaces, the SVES can become a Class
0 component, which means it can be used in
residential houses since it can slow the spread
of fire.
How the flooring module of the SVES is formed using a mould
SVES is made entirely with Onewood’s HRT,
which aims to be a sustainable alternative to
hardwood timber by using wood fibres from
tree plantations that are bound together using
a water-based binder. Pan estimated that HRT
is roughly 70% of wood fibres, and 30% of the
binder.
Using reconstituted timber addresses the
multiple issues mentioned earlier that
plague Singapore’s mass timber industry.
Since Onewood sources wood fibres from
plantations around the region, such as Malaysia,
manufacturing SVES will not incur huge freight
and shipping costs, unlike importing engineered
timber from Europe. Furthermore, HRT uses
wood fibres from plantation timber that only
requires 5-7 years compared to mass engineered
timber which uses solid lumber that requires
a longer harvest period of around 30 years
rotation. The density of reconstitute timber also
makes the SVES resistant to termites.
But that does not mean reconstituted timber,
and by extension SVES, can be used immediately
for construction use, since Singapore allows
engineered timber from Europe or New
Zealand to be used in high-rise projects. Pan
elaborated: “Since Singapore subscribes to
the EU building code, you need to make sure
the material complies with the building code
through certification and testing, and that takes
a very long time. And they are many different
certifications to go through which are expensive.”
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 45

MATERIALS
Even so, SVES is developed with the
goal of using it for low-rise projects, like
residential houses. “The idea is that
we can change the building type with
SVES, and we do not need columns and
beams anymore, since we are not doing
high-rise construction,” added Pan. “I
am looking at a maximum of two-anda-half-storey
building.”
PREFABRICATION
As a Design for Manufacturing and
Assembly (DfMA)-trained architect,
Pan and his studio developed the
SVES with prefabrication in mind.
The SVES modules can be fabricated
and manufactured off-site, before
being delivered to the construction
site and installed onto the building
itself. Furthermore, the mould used to
press the laminated veneers into an
eggcrate structure can be reused again
to produce more eggcrate structures,
allowing the mass production of SVES
modules.
Although prefabrication has a negative
connotation in the architecture sector
since it seemingly allows only cookiecutter
designs, Pan wanted to explore
how to achieve design freedom
alongside prefabrication and mass
customisation. Other important aspects
to prefabrication are its eco-friendliness
and economy.
For instance, speaking about another
residential project he is currently
working on, a mass timber, two-storey
detached house or bungalow in
Sentosa, Singapore, Pan described how
even though mass timber solutions
seem costlier than concrete or steel
structures in Singapore, the overall cost,
which takes into account construction
time and labour, is actually cheaper.
For the bungalow he is working on,
Pan mentioned that it only requires
“less than four weeks” to complete
the on-site installation of the wooden
structure. Prefabrication therefore
saves time and manpower.
“There is an economy of scale here,
where I am looking at componentbased
timber products and doing
different column, wall, or beam types. I
am giving architects all the kit of parts
[of the wooden building components],
which they can take and create
different design forms. I come from a
design background, and I am looking at
the possibility of mass customisation
so that in the end, architects get more
flexibility out of my solutions,” said
Pan.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Currently, the proof of concept and
prototype for SVES are done, and what’s
left are the certifications and testing.
This can be achieved with pilot testing.
Pan needs to test the SVES components
in a building, ensuring they are safe and
ready for use, and these tests can only
be done in South East Asian countries
where the pilot project will be nearer to
the source of timber.
Pan and his studio Produce are also
looking for Singapore grants to further
support his tests, and he is also
exploring alternatives to sprinkler
technology, such as mist systems
which can slow the spread of flames on
mass timber surfaces. However, that
would require several governmental
organisations in the water and building
industries to change current regulations
and codes, and to change their mindset
about fire regulations. Otherwise,
certifications to ascertain the ecofriendliness
of SVES, such as Singapore
Green Label Certificate or Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) certification,
or to ascertain the SVES’ durability and
fire resistance, such as Durability Test
EN 113-2 (2020) and EN 350 (2016) and
British Standard – Surface Spread of
Flame Test Report BS 476: Part 7: 1997,
are still needed before the SVES is
market ready. P
How the wall module
of SVES is formed
The finished
prototype of SVES,
and how the hollow
spaces can be
pumped with fire
retardant foam
46 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

www.floortechindonesia.com
Fostering the Future
of Flooring and Surface
Technologies
JIEXPO
Kemayoran
Indonesia

MATERIALS
Local material for
local needs: Rubberwood
furniture by MUJI Singapore
This is the first time MUJI allowed its South East Asian subsidiaries
to design and manufacture their own furniture line-up, tailored
to local lifestyles. What about rubberwood appeals to them and
their consumers? Katsushi Onishi, managing director of MUJI
Singapore, shares more with Yap Shi Quan.
Humidity, arguably one of the biggest
threats to the longevity of wooden furniture,
is present everywhere in South East Asia.
Moisture can seep into the material and cause
the hardwood furniture to warp.
1
But rubberwood is resistant to humidity.
That means it is less likely to warp, and can
be used for a longer time than hardwood.
“It is the most suitable material for furniture
products in this local climate,” said Onishi.
Recognising this advantage, on top of
rubberwood’s hardness and smooth touch,
MUJI Singapore began manufacturing a new
line-up of furniture, including desks, storage
beds and dining tables, and debuted it in
the beginning of January 2023. Additional
designs, which include shelves and cabinets,
rolled out at the end of January.
‘THINK LOCAL, ACT LOCAL’
This is not the first time MUJI sold wooden
furniture, with a line-up of oak and walnut
furniture. This however marks the first
time MUJI authorised its ASEAN markets
to independently develop products. The
company recognised differences in cultures
and lifestyles across different countries,
and thus allowed its subsidiary companies
to customise the design and manufacture
products tailored to the culture and
preferences of each market.
This is part of their ‘think local, act local’
move where their ASEAN committees make
ASEAN-centric products, according to Onishi.
Their furniture line-ups respond to the limited
living space across South East Asian countries.
Customers, such as city dwellers in the region,
are increasingly expecting furniture products
to be able to adapt to their lifestyles, and hence
MUJI expects that home furniture trends will
shift towards compact products that can serve
multiple functions.
“For example, our popular stainless steel unit
shelf product empowers customers to combine
shelves and frames of various materials and sizes
with a wide range of optional parts to create
a customised shelving unit,” said Onishi. “And
if their lifestyle changes, customers can easily
purchase additional compatible components and
re-configure the product for their needs.”
This trend is reflected in MUJI Singapore’s
rubberwood furniture as well, such as storage
beds or a collapsible table as space-saving
solutions. However, using rubberwood comes
with its own set of challenges. As Onishi
explained: “Rubber trees are not large. Hence,
long and wide timbers cannot be obtained,
48 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

MATERIALS
2 3
resulting in limitations to the type of products
we can make with rubberwood. If solid lumber
is used it will be laminated lumber, and there
are also drawbacks such as variations in the
colour of the lumber, and nodes may form
easily. Therefore, the work of the sawing mill
and processing factories is critical, such as
connecting short pieces with finger joints.”
ECO-FRIENDLINESS
According to Onishi, consumers are also
looking for home furniture made with
sustainable resources, gradually moving
away from fast furniture and making more
environmentally conscious decisions in
their homes. Many are turning to the appeal
of natural materials, warm, harmonised
aesthetics, and minimalist designs, while
turning away from visual clutter and synthetic
materials. This helps to add a grounding
dimension to the interior and widen the
perspective of limited space, with the
versatility to blend in with other interior
decorations.
Indeed, this makes a bigger case for MUJI
Singapore to use rubberwood. Compared
to hardwoods like oak, where the primary
purpose of the tree is to be cultivated and
harvested to make wooden products,
rubberwood is an agricultural by-product
of the rubber industry — which is prevalent
across South East Asia, like Vietnam and
Malaysia. This makes it a sustainable resource.
Furthermore, MUJI sources rubberwood from
Vietnam, where the development base for
MUJI ASEAN household items is; they have
existing suppliers established in Vietnam,
and their product development team is also
currently stationed there. This potentially
reduces the carbon footprint of their
production.
Ensuring that the rubberwood used is
harvested and used in an environmentally
friendly way is part of the quality standards
that MUJI sets for themselves. As Onishi
put it: “To ensure quality standards are
met, we inspect each process of the design
development, procurement, and production.
We promote manufacturing that makes the
best use of the original functions of these
natural materials. We are working on selecting
raw materials collected and cultivated in
a way that does not negatively impact the
environment, animals, plants, and producers.”
MUJI inspects their products according to
their in-house standards, Ryohin Standards,
which aims to comply with various laws
established by countries worldwide and
local administrations. With the Ryohin
Standards, Onishi explained that MUJI’s
Development and Production division and
each Merchandising division collect product
information and information on changes in
the social environment, market trends, and
industry trends daily. They also research on
cases that require new establishment, revision
or abolition of Ryohin Standards, and consider
new standards as necessary so that they can
maintain and manage a state where product
quality can always be guaranteed.
He added: “For primary raw materials,
we use those that can be traced back to
the production area whenever possible.
In addition, we conduct self-assessments
and surveys to ensure that wood products,
including furniture, are made from legally
logged timber in compliance with Japan’s
Clean Wood Act and other relevant laws and
regulations. We also verify the legality of
timber by collecting various certificates and
confirmation documents.”
Legend
1 Rubberwood has a natural, appealing soft colour tone
2 The rubberwood storage bed is a spacesaving
solution
3 The rubberwood shoe rack is also an appeal to
South East Asian households, since shoe racks
are common in the region
PLUGGING GAPS
MUJI Singapore opened their first store in
Singapore 20 years ago. Singapore, being
a mature market, has had a larger sales
composition of furniture as compared to
other South East Asian countries, so MUJI can
understand and adapt to the needs of their
customers. Based on this, they will continue
searching for materials suitable for other
countries with similar climates.
Onishi clarified: “This is not limited to
rubberwood: Tropical woods such as palm
wood, acacia, and mango can also be
commercialised for various purposes. For the
past 40 years, MUJI has been reviewing materials
and inspecting processes, so it is nothing special.
We will continue to provide products with good
features to local people. This is a strategy that
has stayed the same since our founding.”
With 20 years of experience in the Singapore and
South East Asian market, MUJI Singapore also
aims to plug a gap in the furniture market: Onishi
believed that there is little middle-range furniture
offered in the market; they are either luxury
furniture of premium material and design with a
high price tag, or inexpensive fast furniture that
is usually mass produced and made only to last a
few years, giving rise to environmental issues.
“With this, we identify the opportunity to
fill the supply gap by offering reasonably
priced, functional, and sustainable furniture
with quality that can last a long time,” he
concluded. P
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 49

FLOORING
A unique retreat
Swiss manufacturer Bauwerk Parquet outfits a building with
warm wooden floors: The Casa Sant’Agnese, perched above
Lake Maggiore that runs across Italy and Switzerland,
serves as a refuge for the sisters of a Catholic religious
order in the later years of their lives.
For Bauwerk Parquet, the project
presented the challenge of matching
the colour of the wooden flooring to the
panelling on the walls and ceilings, and
to the many built-in wooden furniture
items. “We have always felt very well
advised by the professionals at Bauwerk
Parquet,” said Guerra, who previously
worked with Bauwerk Parquet on several
projects.
Designed by Switzerland architect
Cristiana Guerra, the new Casa
Sant’Agnese in Muralto municipality,
near the resort city of Locarno in
Switzerland, looks as if it has been there
for ages. Its reserved design radiates a
sense of calm. Inside, there are white
and light-grey sections on the ceilings
and walls. Above all, wood is the
stand-out material: Wooden fittings and
furniture, coupled with wooden floors
from Bauwerk Parquet, impart a warm
ambiance to the rooms. The nuns from
the Order of the Sisters of Mercy of the
Holy Cross of Ingenbohl will be spending
their retirement in the twenty modestly
furnished rooms and varied common
areas in the Casa Sant’Agnese.
1
Guerra embedded the Casa
Sant’Agnese into a terraced vineyard.
Parts of the building shelter a calm
inner courtyard, which the nuns use as
a garden for growing medicinal plants.
A statue of Saint Francis overlooking
a panoramic view standing in a small
forecourt welcomes the residents and
ushers them inside. The entrance hall
leads to the chapel, which fascinates
with an impressive play of light and
shadow and is completely clad in
wood.
WOOD FOR BETTER WELL-BEING
The architect ultimately chose the
Monopark parquet format by Bauwerk
Parquet. This short-strip oak parquet
has a natural oiled surface and a calm
grading, blending in with the interiors
of Casa Sant’Agnese. Guerra planned it
as a long-lasting floor that covered the
common rooms, such as the library and
the refectory, as well as the corridors and
the nuns’ rooms. “In Casa Sant’Agnese,
the parquet floor’s warm radiance
supports a sense of well-being for the
mind and soul,” explained the architect.
MODERN AND ECO-FRIENDLY
The Monopark parquet collection was
installed in Casa Sant’Agnese in a classic
ship deck pattern. The two-layer parquet
had a compact 9.6mm structure and is
hard-wearing. Precise manufacturing
ensured a quick, reliable installation
process. Bauwerk specifically developed
Monopark for the commercial sector
with the classic strip parquet look.
The parquet underlay featured the
dimensionally stable and resilient
high-density fibreboard (HDF) panel
technology. The resource-saving top
layer consisted of 3mm of fine wood —
50 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

FLOORING
3
2 4
Legend
1 The interior of a room in Casa
Sant’Agnese
2 Oak wood stairs
3 Monopark installed in ship deck pattern
4 Wooden fittings, furniture and floors impart
a warm ambiance to the rooms
durable oak for the Casa Sant’Agnese
— and could be renovated several times
to sustain long periods of use. According
to Bauwerk, the wood was sourced
from sustainable forestry, similar to
all of their products. Monopark is
ecobau-certified and meets the criteria
for the eco-INSTITUT-label — ecobau
is a Switzerland-based certification
organisation for healthy and ecological
buildings, and eco-INSTITUT-label aims
to be the standard for indoor air quality
and low-pollutant products — and
represents the parquet’s ecological
quality and perfect suitability for healthy
living.
Isidori Pavimenti, a second-generation
family-run floor installer operating
in the Ticino canton of Switzerland,
processed around 1,200m 2 of Monopark
in the 470mm x 70mm short strip format
at the Casa Sant’Agnese. They produced
the skirting and steps for the stairs
using the same oak wood supplied by
Bauwerk Parquet.
Bauwerk reported that the Casa
Sant’Agnese is “very popular” with
the nuns, and that Guerra and
the nuns reportedly appreciate
the certified eco-friendliness.
The Swiss architect Mario Botta
thanked Guerra for her work in
Muralto in an essay, where in the
Casa Sant’Agnese, she “created a
humble yet refined space for quiet
meditation”. P
Images: Marcelo Villada Ortiz
Panels & Furniture Asia | March/April 2023 51

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
An insider’s view of
structural engineering
and design
What are Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) and
building information modelling (BIM)? How have they transformed
the mass timber construction industry? We answer these questions
and more with Emanuele Fornalè, technical director of Studio
Fornalè, a timber structural engineering firm with experience in
static and dynamic seismic analysis and DfMA projects. By Pang YanJun
Can you tell us what Studio Fornalè
specialises in?
Emanuele Fornalè: Studio Fornalè is an
engineering studio that deals exclusively with
the structural design of timber buildings —
particularly with the static and dynamic designs
of wooden structures of any type and size, with
specific attention to those located in seismic
areas.
Over the years, we have learned how important
the knowledge of production processes,
management of transport logistics, and
assembly phases are, and how all these
information affect design choices. Today, with
nearly 15 years of experience and over 400
projects completed, we are able to provide
our customers a comprehensive service
that integrates the structural design with all
subsequent phases, ensuring the project’s
feasibility and optimisation of costs and
installation times.
1
Why does the studio specialise in timber?
Fornalè: I am originally from northern Italy,
the city of Trento, where I learnt to love nature
and the alpine environment. In the year which
I was graduating there was a lot of scientific
ferment at the University of Trento and at the
CNR - Institute of Tree and Timber (IVALSA):
52 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
2
3
Experiments and analyses were underway on
a seven-storey cross-laminated timber (CLT)
building designed at the CNR, which was
carried out at the National Research Institute
for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention
(NIED) centre in Tsukuba, Osaka, Japan in
2007. On that occasion, the CLT building was
dynamically tested and subjected to the
accelerogram of the destructive Hanshin-Awaji
earthquake (PGA 0.82g), with excellent results
on the seismic tests.
All these strongly stimulated my attention and,
thanks to my personal predisposition, mass
timber quickly became my world: I love to
visit the dry building sites that smell of wood.
I specialise therefore in timber structures, and
over the years the sector has grown, allowing
us to expand our team and face greater and
increasingly more complex challenges.
Can you explain what static design and DfMA
are, and how they are important in mass
timber construction?
Fornalè: First of all, we start from the
static design: Depending on the loads
Legend
1 A CLT building in
Trento, the Italian
city where Fornalè
learnt to love timber
structures
2 The panels are
numbered in a BIM
interface, ensuring
easier management
and allocation of
supplies
3 FEM analyses
complex systems in
structural engineering
and predicts how
parts behave under
certain circumstances
acting and the performances that we
want to ensure for the building, such as
deformations, fire resistance, vibrations, wind
accelerations, among others, we proceed to
the dimensioning of the structural timber
elements and the connections. For this phase
to be as effective as possible, it must already
take into account many aspects related
to the successive phases. It is essential to
know right away, for example, what the
maximum transport dimensions related to
site accessibility will be, rather than knowing
the maximum load capacities of the lifting
systems present at the construction site.
Once the executive project is completed, the
DfMA phase begins: A 3D computer-aided
design (CAD) / computer-aided manufacturing
(CAM) model is produced in which all the
connection systems, the milling and the
machining operations to be carried out on the
panels are reported. This is a delicate phase
because it is necessary to know the tolerances
of the processing and the laying well, and to
know how the elements will be assembled and
installed for any additional processing.
At the end of the process, we are able to
transfer to the production a file ‘frozen’ that
contains all the data and information in
machine language so that everything can
be produced, both the CLT and the gluelaminated
timber (glulam). During the DfMA
phase, we will also prepare the assembly
plan and then assign a numbering system
to the panels such that they are produced,
delivered and laid according to the supply or
installation logic planned with the customer
or installer.
In your experience, how have
construction or engineering methods
developed in the mass timber industry
since Studio Fornalè’s formal beginnings
in 2009?
Fornalè: Since 2009, the world of timber
construction has developed with great
speed. We have seen a great evolution of the
software available for both the calculation
and production of timber structures. The
development of the BIM approach in design
is certainly very advantageous and has
become a working methodology, even with
some workflow limitations. With BIM, you
can communicate directly with all the actors
in the process and be constantly informed
about the interferences between various
disciplines.
What do you think the industry can do
better in terms of structural engineering
or construction software systems?
Fornalè: One aspect that will have to be
improved in the coming years is the iteration
between the software we use, from BIM
files to finite element method (FEM) design
until DfMA models. Optimising the workflow
by entering the functions that artificial
intelligence (AI) and computational design
offer will allow us to manage increasing
complexity.
Can you share a completed project by the
studio?
Fornalè: In 2015, we completed a CLT
building project consisting of 12 units
disposed on three floors. It was a significant
project for me because, for the first time,
we developed the whole BIM-FEM-DfMA
workflow. It was really challenging at that
time but it gave us the opportunity to start
working the way we do today.
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 53

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
Being able to manage the process, from the
initial 3D model up to the definition of the laying
phases, allowed our customers to manage the
entire process of designing and constructing
the building in a simple and clear way. The
construction schedule of the building foreseen
in the Gannt chart was respected, and therefore
the cash-flow of the construction was also
respected.
4
It was our first experience at 360° design and
the starting point for subsequent designs. We
can tell our customers, thanks to the workflow
developed over the years, how long the design
takes, but above all the time taken and costs in
the construction phase. Deciding everything on
a complete 3D model on the one hand overloads
the design process, and on the other gives rise
to unforeseen, additional costs or extended
delivery times.
In your opinion, what can the industry do
to convince more architects, developers
or engineers to build more mass timber
structures?
Fornalè: First of all, it is important that the
industrial world continues to supply products
that respect the environment and the
production chain, such as Forest Stewardship
Council (FSC), the Programme for the
Endorsement of Forest Certification, and others.
Timber-based materials should be produced
from sustainable and managed forests. Quality
and quality control standards must always be
impeccable.
5
Legend
4 DfMA is the practice of constructing building elements off-site and assembled on-site
5 Optimising the workflow, from BIM to FEM and DfMA, can allow structural
engineers to manage increasing complexity in projects
The initial architectural project was
developed in BIM by the architectural firm
and used by us as a basis for developing
FEM 3D modelling. The development of the
building’s static design was shared with
architects and the mechanical, electrical
and plumbing (MEP) engineers using
BIM models. In that way we were able to
optimise the structural design, avoiding
interference with both the MEP and the
architectural finishing elements.
The final 3D model of the building, validated by
all the technicians involved, was later converted
into a 3D CAD/CAM model using using the hsbcad
software. We had inserted all the millings with
the necessary tolerances and we interfaced with
the building team to understand how to manage
the supply of the building site. We numbered
the panels according to the installation stages
and prepared a manual laying of the structures
according to the order we established and in
accordance with the supply.
It is important that the approach to construction
and sustainability has changed in a synergistic
way: We know that the building sector is
responsible for 40% of polluting emissions and
a large part of these are due to the embodied
energy of the building materials. It is therefore
necessary that all the actors involved in the
constructive process come together to reduce,
as much as possible, the environmental impact.
Mass timber products offer different building
systems, such as wood frames, CLT, post and
beams, hybrid structures, each of which is best
suited to different areas, from small or medium
buildings to multi-storey structures. It is
necessary to spread and disseminate the culture
of mass timber structures to ensure that over
time, it becomes the prevailing constructive
methodology to reduce the environmental
impact of the industry. P
54 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
The Black &
White Building
Location:
Shoreditch, London, UK
Architecture firm:
Waugh Thistleton Architects
Client:
The Office Group (TOG)
Tulipwood supplier:
American Hardwood Export Council
(AHEC)
Photography:
Ed Reeve and Fred MacGregor
Completion:
2022
Design-led workspace specialist The
Office Group (TOG) came together with
timber specialist Waugh Thistleton
Architects to explore a new approach to
workplace design. In The Black & White
Building, they explored an ‘architecture of
sufficiency’ — where every element serves
a purpose, nothing is superfluous, and all
materials and processes are as efficient
and sustainable as possible.
Standing 17.8m above the Shoreditch,
London, UK streetscape, on the site of a
former timber seasoning shed, The Black
& White Building is reportedly TOG’s first
building that they built from scratch.
Their new seven-floor mass-timber
building in the heart of Shoreditch sets
out to demonstrate that timber is not just
a viable alternative to the conventional
concrete and steel used to build offices.
Rather, when it comes to performance and
sustainability, it is the preferable option.
A TOWER OF TIMBER
Created using renewable materials and
innovative construction methods, The
Black & White Building aims to be both a
landmark in sustainable architecture and
a statement of intent for TOG.
1
The building is situated a stroll from
the tech hub of Old Street and Silicon
Roundabout, on Rivington Street in
Shoreditch — one of London’s ultra-low
emission thoroughfares. The previous
building on the site, a 11,000sqft structure
painted black and white, was incapable
56 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
3 of meeting the area’s growing workspace
demand but also unviable for extension, so
TOG co-founders and co-CEOs Olly Olsen and
Charlie Green were determined to create the
most sustainable building they possibly could.
Their research led them to Waugh Thistleton
Architects, a firm that developed timber designs
for over a decade, including residential blocks
such as Dalston Works and Murray Grove, as
well as Vitsoe’s Leamington Spa HQ.
“When I heard that TOG was thinking about
a new sustainable office building, it was like I
was standing in the queue for a nightclub and
they put my favourite song on. I admire the fact
they had the commitment and the courage to
do this in the first place. They flew in the face of
naysayers, and they took the lead. It was very
bold of them,” said Andrew Waugh, co-founder
of Waugh Thistleton Architects.
2
TOG and Waugh Thistleton set out to create
a building that minimised carbon in both
its construction and, once complete, its
operations. The architects proposed a structure
built from ground up using cross-laminated
timber (CLT) and laminated veneer lumber
(LVL). These high-performance engineered
wooden materials generate less greenhouse
gas emissions in the production than steel or
cement, saving thousands of tonnes in CO2,
while also being durable.
GROWN IN UNDER THREE HOURS
As well as generating less waste than more
common building materials such as iron,
steel and cement, CLT and LVL also have the
advantage of being replenishable. The CLT
frame was chosen for its ideal balance of
sustainability, lightness and strength. Gluelaminated
timber (glulam) is used for the
curtain walling, and the columns and beams are
made out of beech LVL.
Legend
1 Full view of The Black
& White Building
2 The louvres are made
using TMT tulipwood
3 The CLT frame
was chosen for
its ideal balance
of sustainability,
lightness and strength
3
The structure comprises a combination of
timbers from 227 beech and 1,547 pine and
spruce trees harvested from certified forests
in Austria and Germany. For a sustainable
forest to regenerate the quantity of wood used
in constructing The Black & White Building
would take approximately 137 minutes —
meaning it is possible to grow enough timber
to construct a six-storey, seven-floor building
in less time than it takes to bake a loaf of
bread.
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 57

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
4
CLT is lighter and easier to transport than
conventional building materials such as
concrete and steel, which means fewer
deliveries are required to bring the necessary
quantities to the construction site. This not
only represents a carbon reduction in terms
of logistics, it also makes building in dense
urban areas a more efficient process that is less
disruptive for neighbours and other road users.
Because the timber components are
prefabricated and precision-engineered to
be slotted together, the ‘screwed not glued’
building not only requires a smaller workforce
to construct, it also has a part to play in the
circular economy. At the end of its life, the
building can be easily disassembled rather
than demolished, and the materials can be
recovered and reused.
Overall, The Black & White Building creates
37% less embodied carbon than a comparable
concrete structure, and serves as a longterm
carbon store for 1,014.7 tonnes of CO2
equivalent, or 55% of the building’s total
sequestered in the timber structure. The team
expects to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating.
“The principal message of The Black & White
Building is sustainability — this is a mainstream,
grade-A central London office building, built
entirely from timber. It clearly demonstrates
that mass timber is a viable replacement for
concrete and steel in the mainstream office
market, saving thousands of tonnes of CO2.
We are trying to change the way we build, to
transform the industry,” said Waugh.
ENERGY-EFFICIENT EXTERIOR
The Black & White Building is powered by
reportedly 100% renewable energy sources,
including 80 solar panels on the rooftop. No
element of The Black & White Building is purely
decorative; everything has a purpose. Notably,
the exterior is clad in timber louvres that run
from street level to the roof. These provide
natural shade, reducing solar gain on the
facade and boosting the natural light reaching
the interior. The louvres change in depth as
they ascend the building to optimise energy
efficiency. The use of louvres also minimises
the amount of solar coating needed to protect
the clear glass windows.
According to Shawn Adams, architect and
lecturer at the University of the Arts London,
Waugh Thistleton Architects used a parametric
computer model of the building and used a
sun path diagram to calculate the amount of
light that would enter the scheme. 1 In doing so,
the team designed solar shading that allowed
ample amounts of light to enter the office
spaces while having the least possible solar
gains.
The louvres are crafted from thermally
modified tulipwood, recommended and
supplied by the American Hardwood Export
Council (AHEC). This timber is affordable,
lightweight, readily replenished, and has
minimal environmental impact. Using TMT
tulipwood to envelope a multi-storey building
is new territory for TOG and the architects, but
given its effectiveness on The Black & White
Building, it is likely that similar applications
will be seen in both new-builds and retrofits as
a means of reducing carbon consumption and
solar gain.
Using tulipwood also helped the environment.
Wood species like ash often get thermally
modified for exterior decoration, like decking
and cladding. However, according to Adams,
data from the US Department of Agriculture
(USDA)’s Forest Inventory Analysis showed
that American tulipwood makes up 7.7% of
the total hardwood growing stock. AHEC’s
research concluded that tulipwood also has
great strength properties relative to its weight
and works well externally after undergoing
thermal modification, and so recommended it
to Waugh Thistleton Architects.
As an additional benefit, the tulipwood appeals
to people’s inherent appreciation for natural
materials — something that the building’s
interiors by Daytrip, with their exposed timbers
58 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS
5 6
and natural textiles, also make the
most of. According to Waugh, with
timber interior design, people working
in such environment “tend to stay
in the job longer”, and they will feel
“happier” and “more productive”.
DESIGNED FOR CONNECTION
Internally, The Black & White Building
has been designed to encourage
interaction and collaboration,
enabling people to connect through
a variety of spaces in multiple ways.
Lounges of various sizes and layouts
are found throughout, as well as
plentiful break-out areas and pockets
of outdoor space, culminating in
a decked rooftop terrace offering
cityscape views, ideal for sunny
days. To maximise natural light in
the building throughout the day, a
lightwell runs the full height of the
building from the rooftop terrace
down to a courtyard containing a
maple tree on the lower ground floor.
Altogether, the building is home to 28
offices of various sizes, six meeting
rooms, focus booths and break-out
areas, 94 bike storage spaces and
showers. On the lower-ground floor,
beside the indoor courtyard and
open to the sunlight is a dedicated
yoga and barre studio which will host
a timetable of wellness activities
focused on holistic health. As well
as assorted yoga disciplines and
barre, classes will include Pilates,
high-intensity interval training (HIIT),
breathwork and meditation, with the
space freely available to members
from across the TOG network in
between sessions.
As with the exterior, every feature of
the internal space is functional and
honest, echoing the emphasis on
timber as the structural essence of
the building — the environmental
credentials clearly written into the
materials. The entire building is, as
Waugh Thistleton has described it,
“visibly sustainable”. The sensory
impact of the space is significant.
“I love that kind of ‘whoosh’ sensation
you get when you first come in – the
beauty, excitement and aroma. When
you walk through the front door and
discover the contemporary cathedral
quality to the space, you just feel that
there is a sense of overwhelming
optimism about the building,” said
Waugh.
A BENCHMARK FOR SUSTAINABILITY
For both TOG and Waugh Thistleton
Architects, The Black & White Building
represents a proof of concept they
hope will inspire and encourage the
wider architectural community to adopt
carbon-minimal construction methods
and engineered timber materials.
In the short term, the building will
provide a Shoreditch home for creative
businesses determined to make a credible
sustainability statement. In the long
term, it is a call to kickstart a new era of
architecture, founded on low-carbon
construction, circular thinking, and
natural materials.
“The Black & White Building represents a
major step forward for us, and — I hope
— the wider industry too. It is a statement
of who we are and how we will approach
sustainability; we do not need to build the
traditional way with concrete and steel
anymore. We always retrofit when we
can, and when we build new buildings in
future, TOG is committed to constructing
them from timber and other sustainable
materials,” concluded Green. P
References
1. American Hardwood Export Council. The Black & White
Building. < https://www.americanhardwood.org/en/
examples/case-studies/the-black-white-building-by-waughthistleton-architects>
Legend
4 Every room
looks “visibly
sustainable”
5 Closeup view of
the louvres
6 The columns and
beams are made
out of beech LVL
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 59

SUSTAINABILITY
EU adopts
deforestation-free
products regulation
The EU agreed on a new deforestation
regulation that requires companies
to produce a due diligence statement
showing when and where their
commodities were produced and
provide verifiable information
that they were not grown on land
deforested after 2020, or they will risk
hefty fines.
THE SCOPE OF REGULATION
The scope of the regulation on
deforestation-free products fills gaps in
the EU Timber Regulation and follows
a similar pattern to the EU’s Corporate
Sustainability Reporting Directive:
The updated EU
deforestation-free
regulation also
aims to protect the
rights of indigenous
peoples
Inspiring the next “material
revolution” by creating sustainable
and high-performance materials
from oil palm waste, Peter Fitch,
together with IOI, have set up IOI
Palm Wood to commercialise this
untapped potential.
A new EU law preventing the
import of commodities linked to
deforestation might risk side-lining
timber producers, small furniture
makers, or community farmers
who are unable to meet the cost of
compliance of these new standards.
Days before the UN Biodiversity
Conference (COP15) in December
2022, the European Parliament and
the European Council reached an
agreement on the terms of a new
regulation on deforestation-free
products. First initiated in 2021
within the Green Deal framework,
this regulation is part of a wider
effort from the European legislator
to regulate international supply
chains.
High impact sectors targeted: Palm
oil, beef, timber, coffee, cocoa, soy
and rubber are subject to mandatory
due diligence rules. These relevant
commodities and their products
(RC&P) — for instance, most furniture
are timber products — therefore
are prohibited from being imported
in or exported from the EU market
if they are not deforestation-free.
Deforestation-free means they are
produced on land that has not been
subject to deforestation, and the wood
has been harvested from the forest
without inducing forest degradation.
They must also have been produced
in accordance with the relevant
legislation of the country of production
and must be covered by a due
diligence statement.
Human rights protection: As
deforestation is often linked to human
rights violations, the scope of the
regulation has been broadened to
include human rights obligations.
Thus, RC&P must also have been
produced in compliance with the
relevant legislation of the country of
production regarding human rights
and the rights of indigenous peoples.
Key definitions enshrined: For the
first time, the European legislator
defines what constitutes deforestation,
which is considered to be “the
conversion of forest to agricultural
use, whether human-induced or not”.
60 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

SUSTAINABILITY
Forest degradation, which is a new notion,
encompasses “harvesting operations that are
not sustainable and cause a reduction or loss
of the biological or economic productivity and
complexity of forest ecosystems, resulting in
the long-term reduction of the overall supply
of benefits from forest, which includes wood,
biodiversity and other products or services”.
Larger groups responsible: For operators
and non-SME traders, the obligations laid
down by the regulation are the same. The
scope has indeed been widened compared
to the EU Timber Regulation, and large
traders’ obligations are no longer limited to
traceability.
DUE DILIGENCE MACHANISM
How does the regulation’s due diligence
mechanism work?
Submission of the due diligence statement:
A due diligence statement, confirming that
due diligence has been carried out and
showing no or only negligible risk, must be
submitted to competent authorities prior to
placing RC&P on the EU market or exporting
them outside the union. Non-compliance,
non-negligible risk of non-compliance
or inability to complete a due diligence
procedure are enough to prevent RC&P from
being marketed, imported or exported.
Due diligence procedure: The regulation
sets out a three-step due diligence procedure
regarding the due diligence statement:
Finally, operators and large traders must
have model risk management policies and
compliance management procedures in
place — including a compliance officer at
management level for non-SME operators.
Non-SME operators must also have an
independent audit function to check the
internal policies, controls and procedures. In
parallel, SME traders have lighter information
requirements and no risk assessment or
mitigation analysis to perform.
De facto extraterritoriality: The first EU entity
to have RC&P in its possession is bound by
the same obligations as the exporter of RC&P.
This means that EU importers must perform
due diligence whenever they buy RC&P from
a non-union entity, regardless of whether the
seller comes from a high-risk region or not.
What matters, rather, is if the RC&P enter the
EU market the first time.
This makes sense as not all products which
enter legally a third country’s market would
be considered deforestation-free under the
EU regulation. For example, in the US, even if
the draft US Forest Act were to be adopted in
its current form, American operators would
still only have to assess the goods if they
originated from illegally deforested lands,
whereas European operators must check that
the goods do not originate from deforested
lands. This is a significant difference.
DEFORESTATION-FREE PALM OIL
So how can we potentially mitigate these new
requirements? Though we are focusing on
timber products, included in the list of RC&P
is palm oil. Despite oil palms being the most
efficient producer of edible oils and the least
carbon-intensive, this material has become
by far the most certified vegetable oil in the
world. On a daily basis, Malaysian companies
already supply the highest levels of certification
and traceability, because this is demanded by
European customers.
Furthermore, successive Malaysian
governments, and the palm oil private sector,
have shown more than good faith: They have
made serious commitments to advancing
ambitious ESG goals.
At IOI Palm Wood, we believe that we can
leverage these commitments to verifiable,
universal ESG goals. Furthermore, the
detailed traceability protocols already in place
within oil palm estates will be able to satisfy
the requirements for such documents as
geolocation and certifiable chain-of-custody for
our sourced main raw material being oil palm
trunks (OPT).
We at IOI Palm Wood believe that such
regulations from the EU will further
demonstrate the sustainability credentials of
this new and exciting material of palm wood. P
First, companies must fulfil information
requirements by collecting the information
listed in the regulation — for instance,
information that shows the RC&P are
deforestation-free, geo-localisation
coordinates of all plots of land where the
RC&P were produced, among others.
Then they must assess the risk of dealing
with non-compliant products using the
criteria listed in the regulation — which
includes but is not limited to the prevalence
of deforestation or forest degradation in
the country, region and area of production,
whether a third party has submitted a
substantiated concern — and according to the
country benchmark analysis provided by the
commission.
Deforestation is rampant throughout the world
Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023 61

EVENTS CALENDAR
Events Calendar 2023
2023
MARCH, 07 – 10
Export Furniture Exhibition
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Wood Taiwan
Taiwan
APRIL, 20 – 23
JULY, 26 – 28
Domotex Asia ChinaFloor
Shanghai, China
AUGUST, 24 – 27
VIFA Expo
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
IFEX 2023
Jakarta, Indonesia
Photo: Mumammad Faiz Zulkeflee / Unsplash
MARCH, 08 – 11
MARCH, 09 – 12
MARCH, 18 – 21
China International Furniture
Fair (Phase 1)
Guangzhou, China
interzum Cologne
Cologne, Germany
LIGNA
Hannover, Germany
imm Cologne 2023
Cologne, Germany
MAY, 09 – 12
MAY, 15 – 19
JUNE, 04 – 07
JUNE, 18 – 20
Photo: Thomas Tucker / Unsplash
Korean International Furniture & Interior Fair
Seoul, South Korea
China International Furniture Fair (Phase 1)
Shanghai, China
Furniture China 2023
Shanghai, China
IFMAC & WOODMAC
Jakarta, Indonesia
SEPTEMBER, 05 – 08
SEPTEMBER, 11 – 15
SEPTEMBER, 20 – 23
MARCH, 28 – 31
China International Furniture Fair (Phase 2)
Guangzhou, China
Malaysian Wood Expo
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
SEPTEMBER, 20 – 23
VietnamWood
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
interzum Guangzhou
Guangzhou, China
Salone del Mobile
Milan, Italy
MARCH, 28 – 31
APRIL, 18 – 23
JUNE, 30 – JULY, 03
in conjunction with
Smart Furniture Solutions and Mass Timber
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
OCTOBER, 04 – 06
2023 NHLA Annual Convention
& Exhibit Showcase
Ohio, US
62 Panels & Furniture Asia | March / April 2023

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Baillie Lumber 11
BAUMER Inspection GmbH 45
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Diffenbacher Industriemarketing GmbH 7
FloorTech 2023 47
Forestry Innovation Investment Ltd.
IFC
Global Timber Asia Sdn Bhd 21
Ifmac & Woodmac 2023 41
IMA Schelling Group Asia Pacific 15
Kuang Yung Machinery Co., Ltd 13
Lensaya Industriya Journal 55
Leuco Ledermann GmbH & Co. KG 64
Malaysian Wood Expo 2023
FC
Nanxing Machinery Co., Ltd 2, 3
Northwest Hardwood 9
PEFC International 35
Quebec Wood Export Bureau (QWEB) 4, 5
Shanghai Wood-Based Panel Machinery Co., Ltd 63
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CONTACT LEUCO
MALAYSIA
Melaka: LEUCO Malaysia Sdn. Bhd
T +60 (0) 6 336 1268, leucomy@leuco.com
THAILAND
Bangkok: LEUCO Tooling (Thailand) Co., Ltd.
T +66 (0) 2 749 5569-70, inquiry@leuco.co.th
VIETNAM
Long An Province: LEUCO Vietnam Co., Ltd
T +84 272 3715838, leucovn@leuco.com
SINGAPORE
Topline Innovative Pte Ltd
T +65 67485513, toplineinnovative@gmail.com
INDONESIA
Jakarta: P.T. Indotooling Sejati
T +62 21 6508743, maria_indotooling@yahoo.co.id
Sidoarjo: P.T. Akses Kita Utama
T +62 318916941, marketing@indotooling-abadi.com
Medan: CV. Kimplas Makmur Sejati
T +62 614 15 8338, cv.kms@outlook.com
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Quezon City: Orgaline Innovative Products Inc.
T +63 2 8932 7651 / +63 2 8932 5401
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Smart Furniture Solutions & Mass Timber 1
Technik Associates, Inc
VietnamWood 2023 25
Wood Taiwan 2023 31
Yalian Machinery Co., Ltd.
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