Web Weavers
Norbord’s OSB plant in La Sarre, QC is a true industry lightweight – small, yes, but fast on its feet and quick to the punch, allowing it to hit markets before larger players can react.
By: Pierre Vaillancourt
When Norbord Industries converted its panel plant in La Sarre in 1995 to OSB production, it wanted above all else to be a flexible producer. The Nexfor subsidiary invested $73 million at the time, and today can make over 150 products. At a time when smaller plants are finding it tough to compete against today’s monster mills, this small plant in northwestern Quebec seems to have played its hand very well.
If you want to hear the story first hand, Gino Trudel is an excellent choice. Starting as a student and then forest engineer, Gino has been a member of Norbord La Sarre’s production and quality control teams since 1982. He is now the proud general manager of this dynamic organization.
Before the 1995 conversion, the tiny plant made plywood and 80 million ft2 of waferboard (3/8" basis). Today, it makes nothing but OSB, to the tune of 350 million ft2 per year (1/6"), or 2.1 billion ft2 (1/16"). While the mill could hold its own in the commodity sector, just 5 to 6% of its production is slated for that market. Since 2000, its fastest growing market has been supplying web stock material for engineered I-beam producers. In 2004, web stock represented over 30% of the plant’s production, a portion that continues to grow at an astonishing rate.
"Between 2000 and 2005, the production of five types of ‘Webstock,’ our brand name product, has gone from 0 to almost 70% of our overall production,” Gino explains.
Each week, the mill turns out 2,300 packets of 8.5-in Webstock in a variety of lengths for over 20 clients, making it a major supplier. All of this is done in a highly automated plant employing 180 in total over three shifts. Still, Gino says in their markets, quality, not production, is key.
“We place a lot of emphasis on product uniformity, such as density, weight, and thickness of course. It is a great source of pride for us. We aim at running a line whose performance in this regard approaches that of a particleboard plant.”
Sell and adapt
While immersed in a production environment, Gino remembers well the effort and expertise required by his sales force in those early days to sell out the plant’s production and keep it running full time. With those struggles in mind, the new plant was designed from the start to allow changes in format and thickness in a matter of minutes, all from a control panel on the finishing line.
“In one week, we can make between 20 and 30 different products according to our order file. During a single 168-hr production week, we will change products every six hours. We are ISO 9002 certified, which requires that at each operating station, our teams must have specific operating instructions for the various recipes matched to specific clients. As a bonus, this diverse product range also creates more stable pricing for our production.”
He adds that the co-ordination between sales and production is so close that 99% of the production coming off the line is already sold. At times, clients can receive a shipment within a month of placing the order, a testament to the plant’s flexibility. All production is slated for Canada and the US, making currency fluctuations the plant’s number one challenge these days.
Norbord consumes 500,000 m3/yr, a mix of aspen, poplar and birch that comes from a 110-km radius around the mill. The recent start up of Temlam’s new LVL (laminated veneer lumber) plant in nearby Amos, QC, with its exclusive focus on aspen, has put tremendous pressure on the plant’s fibre supply. As a result, the mill has seen a steady decline in the diameter of wood reaching its infeed deck.
This has forced the mill to boost log handling speed in two key areas – its hot ponds and debarkers. Two ponds and a single drag chain help clean and thaw the logs in 120ºF water. To speed things up and reduce debris accumulation and pond maintenance, the mill added a second chain conveyor at the end of 2005, and plans to add a third in the spring of 2006. This summer, the mill also plans to replace an ageing debarker. The mill now runs a Nicholson A5A and a USNR/Forano, and plans to replace the latter with one of the same type.
As for the bark, some produced here as well as some bought from outside sources, go to two Wellons boilers and hot oil system, which supply heat for all plant processes. Plans also call for some upgrades to the boiler control system in 2006. The aim is to improve combustion and allow better temperature regulation despite wide seasonal fluctuations in energy demands, as Gino explains.
“In the summer, we consume some 90 million btu in the dryers and press. In winter, the demand climbs to 130 or 140 million btu, with the addition of the hot pond and building heating requirements.”
Another upgrade under study is the addition of a strand pre-heating system designed to reduce press time, although as of our visit in the fall of 2005 no timetable had been set.
For now, incoming 8-ft logs are transformed into 6-in strands on CAE/Carmanah waferizers. Gino notes that Norbord is a leader in using these longer strands, targeting a specific geometry that provides a relatively high rigidityweight ratio.
Strands go to wet bins and then off to two of the first George Koch & Sons single-pass conveyor driers installed in the OSB industry. Added in 1994, they stand in contrast to the majority of OSB plants using triple-pass rotary driers running at much higher temperatures. To maintain the plant’s competitiveness in the long run, Norbord has modified and widened both driers to boost capacity.
“We have worked very hard, first to install those driers at the time, and since to keep them running where we need them to be,” Gino says, adding that a few factors have helped them in their goal to stick with a single-pass drying system. These include the fact that the longer strands are less dense than shorter strands, reducing drying times. In return, the conveyor drying technology gives them a gentler drying process as well as a reduced volume of volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) in their emissions thanks to the lower drying temperatures. Strands take six minutes to pass through the driers’ three sections, with temperatures of 195ºC, 185ºC and 180ºC respectively.
Making the cake
After dry bins, strands go to Coil blenders, where they are mixed with wax to render them water resistant (1 to 1.5% of the particles’ weight), and resin as a binder (1.5 to 4% of their weight). From here, the Schenck Panel Systems former lays down the strands to form the mat, with top and bottom layers laid out in line with the conveyor, and the two middle layers perpendicular. This continuous mat travels en route to the press via a Walker metal detector, a Schwabediessen edge saw and Dieffenbacher flying cut-off saw.
The Siempelkamp press is a 10-opening monster making 9x24-ft panels in 120 to 400 second cycles depending on panel thickness. Pressing at a temperature of 200ºC and a pressure of 750 psi, the press makes the equivalent of 60 4x8 sheets per cycle.
After pressing, sheets flow through an on-line quality control station that verifies thickness, glue integrity and density. Once cooled, panels are pre-cut in a Globe panel saw station and formed into books. A Schelling book saw is used to fill specific orders, with the resulting books piled in packages that vary from 88 to 140 sheets, depending on thickness. Edge protection is also available at the plant, as is sanding via a Tigliabue sander, although little sanding is actually done at this plant.
Packets are completed by an Acme strapper, and are then stored in one of two warehouses for shipping by either truck or rail. In the end, however, Gino affirms that the secret to the plant’s continued success lies in its commitment to niche markets, despite temptations to ride commodity waves.
“There is a volume culture in North America, which is not easy to resist, but for a plant our size would not be ideal. Right from the start we were determined to build a plant that could compete in commodity products where required, but that was flexible enough to focus on special, or value-added products. Even before we were producing OSB we had a strategy of making products that others were not. Back then, the demand was for 4x8 (7/16) waferboard, 5/8" floor boards, and 3/8" plywood for roofing. We avoided those markets, preferring to target 1/4" panels, thinner boards that other plants avoided because of limits in their plant designs or fears that it would hurt their main production volumes. The opportunity for us was there, and those are the kinds of opportunities we still look for.”
Norbord still makes 3/8" and 7/16" OSB products in standard 4x8 and 4x9 sizes when it makes sense or to balance production. The key, Gino adds, is having a firm grasp on production costs, resin and wax recipes and press times for all the various products they can choose from, and then going where the long-term money is. Pierre Vaillancourt is a forestry writer with our sister publication Opérations forestières et de scierie, where this article first appeared.
