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Strong, tighfand tough, plywood is a key component of trucKs and
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vans. Colin Barnett logs the journey from tree to floorboar Experts may argue over the causes of and cures for global warming,but no one will dispute that strange things are happening to our weather. Whatever your views on the future of property values in Norfolk, some industries are feeling the effects now.
On a recent visit to Finland, at a time when Helsinki should have been experiencing temperatures of around -10°C, the city was basking in 17.5°C sunshine. As the national news pointed out, this was the warmest March day since records began.
Why should this interest CM 's readers? Well, if Finland and its Baltic neighbours experience another winter as mild as the one just past, the outcome could be a shortage of a key component of most truck and trailer bodies.
Practically every body requires a floor, and no other product provides the same balance of weight,strength,durability and cost as plywood. CM recently joined a group of UK fleet engineers on a trip to visit UPM's plywood production process in Finland.
UPM is one of the largest timber products companies in the world. While 70% of its turnover comes from paper products. giving it the number one position in magazine paper globally, it is also Europe's largest supplier of plywood. Its timber products division has 5.500 staff and a capacity of 1,100,000m of plywood from facilities in Austria, Estonia, France and Russia, as well as its Finnish home.
UPM products range from relatively lowquality ply for shuttering in the construction industry to the precision-engineered kits that make their way to the Isle of Wight before being assembled and coated in plastic to create the wind turbine blades that are sprouting up around our countryside. But best known to UK buyers is the WISA range of resin-coated plywood products. In 2006, UPM produced 45,000m3 for heavy truck and trailer use and 51,000m3 for precision-cut van floor panels.
In Finland,forestry is known as the farmers' bank.When the faithful farm tractor dies,a suitably mature block of spruce or birch can be sold to raise the cash for a replacement. It's not a short-term investment, though.rlhe whole process is the epitome of sustainability, working on a 100-year cycle of planting, thinning and harvesting.
Key to the process is the tree harvester, at a price that makes a handful of top-spec tractor units look cheap.This monster chops down and trims whole trees in one mechanical action. But that's not all:it also chops the trunks into the most appropriate lengths, colour-codes them according to destination and even transmits the details to head office to keep the production planners informed. It finds its way to the correct small parcel of land thanks to GPS mapping that is accurate almost to the individual tree. And although the machine is highly computerised,it still takes eight years of training to learn to operate it.
Despite its go-anywhere looks, though, the tree-harvester (and the forwarders that collect and carry the logs to the roadside to be hauled to the mill by truck) work best when the ground is either summer bone-dry or winter frozen solid: the wet mush of in-between conditions creates major access problems.
While the winter ordinarily allows the timber mills to build up enough stock to bridge the wet period, 2006/7's very short frozen winter has drastically reduced stock levels.Where there should be three months of stock, there is barely two days' worthalso explaining the UK's current shortage of fencing panels.
If next winter's weather returns to normal patterns, then the industry will soon recover but if there is a repeat of the past winter, then major supply problems will result. And it is no good the Finnish industry looking to Russia and its Baltic neighbours to make up the shortfall as they are in the same boat.
Future products
One type of plywood may look much like another, but there's more to it than meets the eye. For a start, UPM is already working on a wide range of colours.Appearance isn't everything, though: the company diverts 0.3% of its turnover to research and development, creating products for a range of applications.
Even within the UK transport industry, needs vary widely. Travis Perkins' Terry Smith explained to UPM his need for a product that could cope with being out in all weathers while being routinely attacked by construction materials and the bouncing of loading grabs resting on the lloor.
Wm Morrison's John Ward, meanwhile, needed a flooring that could withstand repeated roll cage and forklift traffic around the clock for years on encl.-111e Morrison fleet is often used to trial new UPM products in real-world conditions. Only recently it uncovered an unwanted characteristic in experimental flooring that hadn't shown up in the extensive lab testing. Needless to say, the product went back to the drawing board.
UPM's current developments include an ultra-light fibre-reinforced board made from recycled paper, as well as new coatings, including aluminium,for conventional plywood. •