Panels & Furniture Asia January/February 2024
Panels & Furniture Asia (PFA) is a leading regional trade magazine dedicated to the woodbased panel, furniture and flooring processing industry. Published bi-monthly since 2000, PFA delivers authentic journalism to cover the latest news, technology, machinery, projects, products and trade events throughout the sector. With a hardcopy and digital readership comprising manufacturers, designers and specifiers, among others, PFA is the platform of choice for connecting brands across the global woodworking landscape.
Panels & Furniture Asia (PFA) is a leading regional trade magazine dedicated to the woodbased panel, furniture and flooring processing industry. Published bi-monthly since 2000, PFA delivers authentic journalism to cover the latest news, technology, machinery, projects, products and trade events throughout the sector. With a hardcopy and digital readership comprising manufacturers, designers and specifiers, among others, PFA is the platform of choice for connecting brands across the global woodworking landscape.
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
PANEL MANUFACTURING<br />
Five-layer super<br />
particleboard:<br />
“A concept of greater<br />
end product flexibility”<br />
What is the five-layer super particleboard (SPB),<br />
and how did IMALPAL develop it?<br />
By Yap Shi Quan<br />
properties. Its applications are similar<br />
to a normal particleboard and can be<br />
used for furniture and flooring, but it can<br />
also be used in areas where the typical<br />
particleboard is not strong enough,” said<br />
Nardin.<br />
But what makes the SPB stand out<br />
from a typical particleboard — even<br />
from other wood panel variants — is the<br />
flexibility in its production method.<br />
“The five-layer board allows the<br />
manufacturer to play with different<br />
product characteristics of the board<br />
that they would like to produce,<br />
according to the end user’s demands<br />
and applications,” Nardin elaborated.<br />
IMALPAL formed<br />
mats surface<br />
A particleboard plant in Hubei, China,<br />
owned by wood panel producer<br />
Ningfeng Group is reportedly the “first”<br />
facility globally to produce five-layer<br />
SPB.<br />
The IMALPAL Group signed the<br />
agreement to supply particleboard<br />
production equipment in May 2022,<br />
including equipment for producing<br />
five-layer SPB, and IMALPAL fully<br />
installed everything in June 2023.<br />
What is a five-layer super<br />
particleboard? According to Gabriele<br />
Nardin, sales manager of PAL, the<br />
five-layer SPB has the technical<br />
specifications and machinability of<br />
somewhere “between the typical OSB<br />
construction panel and the typical<br />
particleboard decorative panel”.<br />
In other words, it is multi-layer board<br />
stronger than the typical particleboard,<br />
and catching up to the robustness<br />
of an oriented-strand board (OSB)<br />
construction panel.<br />
“Thanks to its fine surface layer,<br />
a SPB board has high mechanical<br />
What this means is that when producing<br />
a five-layer SPB panel, the manufacturer<br />
can tailor the technical properties<br />
according to what the end consumer<br />
wants by playing with different board<br />
recipes — such as the flake size, flake<br />
distribution, and glue quality and<br />
quantity. “It is a concept of greater end<br />
product flexibility,” as Nardin put it.<br />
The reason for developing such a panel<br />
is because of market demand. Nardin<br />
explained that companies used to<br />
produce the same kind of board with<br />
the same board characteristics. But as<br />
40 PANELS & FURNITURE ASIA | JANUARY / FEBRUARY <strong>2024</strong>
Change language