Välinge installs a new powder line to meet increased demand for WFF floors.

Viken, Sweden - October 13, 2010

The new advanced equipment will increase Välinge’s powder capacity from 3 M m2 to 30 M m2 of Wood Fibre floors (WFF).

Several Välinge licensees are planning to launch powder based WFF floors next year in Europe and in the US. Välinge is also planning to increase its own WFF production in Viken in order to be able to deliver WFF floors to its licensees as a start up support.

The powder for the WFF floors produced by Välinge’s licensees will in the first step be delivered by Välinge from its new advanced and completely automatic powder production line in Viken which is under installation and is planned to be fully operational early next year.

The new line is developed by Välinge and is based on advanced unique technology where wood fibrers are milled into powder, sieved to particles of controlled size and finally mixed with binders, aluminium oxide, colour pigments and other decorative materials to batches according to special recipes that provide a pre determined product quality and design developed individually for each licensee end each product category. 200 – 800 gr/m2 is used depending on quality and design. The new powder line will be able to produce about 15.000 tons/year and this corresponds to about 30 million m2 of high quality wood fibre floors (WFF).


"We are continuously improving our powder technology and are convinced that this new product category will capture considerable market shares in the first stage from the premium laminate market and from ceramic floors. Recently we have developed a new technology that makes it possible to create advanced wood designs with powder-based surfaces. We believe therefore that powder will in the future most probably replace paper in a major part of all laminate floors and in all price categories in the same way as DPL replaced HPL” says Darko Pervan CEO of Välinge.


“WFF based on HDF and powder as raw materials could be produced in an ordinary laminate line with minor modifications and rather limited investments in scattering equipment, design stations and stabilizing units delivered by Välinge. The powder is however a completely new and very advanced technology that requires a lot of experience and chemical expertise that Välinge has developed during several years and where our accumulated R&D cost are about 30 MEUR. We are now ready to take a big step forward and to install a completely automatic high tech powder line with considerable capacity which is based on extensive experience from several years of semi automatic powder production in Viken. We believe that our licensees will be able to increase their capacity and reach a good product quality and cost efficient production in a rather short period of time if they could start their production with powder and know how supplied by Välinge," says Niclas Håkansson, Director Surface technology.


For further information please contact:

Niclas Håkansson
Director R&D, Surface Technology
Mobile: +46 (0)706 23 00 08
Mail:

Marcus Bergelin
Director Technology & Support
Mobile: +46 (0)70 23 78 123
Mail: