Sonae will not take recycled wood again until 2012

Chipboard manufacturer Sonae will not be taking in recycled woodchip at its Knowsley factory until the first quarter of 2012.

The Portuguese company, which ordinarily recycles 1,200 tonnes of waste wood a day at the site, told letsrecycle.com this week that the rebuilding ofits particleboard production plant following a fire in June was taking longer than expected.

Whilethe firm had originally envisaged that it would start taking in recycled material again in October, when a phased start up of its operation was due to begin (see letsrecycle.com story) , it has now pushed this estimate back to early 2012.

A spokeswoman for the company said: We expect to start taking in recycled material in the first quarter of 2012. We cant be more specific at this stage but will be able to update you when we have a firm idea.

The news will come as a blow to many wood recyclers in the North of England, who supply theSonae factory and have seen the waste wood market swampedsince its particleboard operation has temporarily ceased with many turning waste wood away from their yards (see letsrecycle.com story) . While some of the material has been exported to the continent for fuel, this is not always commercially attractive to companies based further away from the south coast.

Thefact that the plant is not currentlyrecycling waste woodwas earlier this week linked to a fall between July and September in the amount of waste wood packaging which was reprocessed across the UK as a whole (see letsrecycle.com story).

The fire at the Sonae factory broke out on June 9 2011 and lasted for eight days. It involved six bunkers of woodchip and at its height, 12 fire appliances were on the scene (see letsrecycle.com story).

Sonae had previously said that production would resume in two stages (see letsrecycle.com story). The first, scheduled for October, would enable 80% of full capacity and the second and final stage will return the operation to full production in the first quarter of 2012, subject to planning approval.

Progress

Nigel Graham, managing director of Sonae Industria (UK) Ltd, said that the reconstruction work to rebuild the particleboard production area of the plant was progressing well.

But, he said that with highly complex and technical projects such as this, there are a number of variable factors that could impact on the delivery timescales. This means that the first stage of production looks likely to resume in November instead.

He said: Unfortunately we envisage the plant restart being slightly delayed by around four weeks due to unexpected additional damaged electrical areas being uncovered during the demolition stage.We are working closely with the main contractor, Barnhill, to ensure production is able to restart as soon as possible. The start up of the particleboard production will be handled extremely carefully with all the systems tested individually prior to the production ‘switch on’.

We have continued to source particleboard from within our group to ensure there is absolutely no disruption of supply to our customers. Our value added operation [the section of the plant which ‘finishes’ the wood] has remained fully operational throughout and is unaffected by the reconstruction work, enabling us to fully satisfy our customer orders.

In preparation for the first stage of production restart, Mr Graham said that the company hadstockpiled virgin fibre, which is also used as feedstock as the plant.

He added: In the New Year we will be talking to our supply chain with regards to establishing and resuming normal intake operations. We would like to take the opportunity to thank our customers for their patience.