The potential of wood product development is not being limited by sawmilling processes and timber properties.
Various glued solutions (glulam beams, CLT, joinery components, glulam sheets etc) offer stable and homogeneous raw materials for the joinery, building and construction, and furniture industries.
Product development
For instance the window industry is nowadays based largely on subcontracted raw material chains, where the window factory sources for its process glued, quality optimised components – concentrating only on a limited number of machinings, surface treatment and assembly. In some cases the components arrive at the window factory as surface treated, with ready to assemble profiles.
Specialisation and process automation in sawn timber’s further processing will in the future increase the overall competitiveness of the industry. Manual labour and traditional conveyors will increasingly be replaced by robots.
Modification of wood
Wood modification – the alteration of its structure – has developed in leaps and bounds over the past decade.
The aim of the modification is to:
- improve the properties, such as stability of measurements,
- ability to withstand various weather conditions,
- strength,
- hardness,
- visual properties or operational properties such as fire performance.
Typical modification methods are for instance heat treatment, pressing, pressure treatment and various surface treatments. In wood treatment typical handling agents are liquids like acetic acid, alcohol derivatives and minerals.
Currently the markets for modified wood are relatively limited, but they are growing steadily. Moreover one can expect that there will be new products entering the markets as a result of active research and development work.
Growing end use segments for modified wood are for example exterior cladding for buildings, and various garden and jetty structures, where the weather and water proof properties have a prime importance.
One can expect that wood modification will increase further, but the growth into strategically significant volumes will still take time.
Increase in construction end uses
The biggest driver for the increased demand for sawn timber has been the construction sector.
About 70 per cent of Nordic sawn timber goes directly into construction work – timber frame, roof trusses, doors, windows, interior products and exterior cladding. The rest goes mainly to the packaging and furniture industries.
© Koskisen Oy
New and innovative, carbon binding wood based solutions offer lots of interesting growth opportunities.
It is likely that wood is going to replace other materials in certain end uses because regulation is steering the practices towards sustainability.
Construction materials will in future be increasingly based on prefabricated components and their favourable environmental credentials.
