June/July 2001
New lines on show at Hornitex
German panel maker Hornitex is involved in most areas of panel manufacture and has a particular emphasis on value adding. Mike Botting visited the company's annual hausemesse exhibition in Horn-Bad Meinberg and took the opportunity to see one of its particleboard lines
Headquartered in Horn-Bad Meinberg, in the centre of the German furniture manufacturing industry, the Hornitex group of companies, or Hornitex Werke Gebr Künnemeyer GmbH & Co KG, to give it its full name, has developed over the last 75 years into a multi-faceted panel making concern.
Still run by the founding Künnemeyer family, the company today has five particleboard lines, one MDF line and a semi-dry process fibreboard line, distributed around four sites in Germany: Horn-Bad Meinberg, Nidda, Beeskow and Duisberg.
Plans are already in hand to build a third MDF line, this time at Horn (the existing lines are at Nidda and Beeskow) and construction is scheduled to start towards the end of this year. That line will replace the ageing fibreboard line, which, after 40 years of service is really due to retire, according to Klaus-Otto Künnemeyer, managing director of Hornitex.
The new MDF line will have a capacity of between 230,000m3 and 250,000m3 per year and will mainly produce thicknesses of 2.5mm for furniture backs, 6mm to 8mm for laminate flooring production and 8mm to 12mm for furniture. It will have the capacity to produce up to 22mm thickness.
Mr Künnemeyer feels that the timing will be right for the new line in terms of the MDF market, as he expects to see a shortage of board in Europe during 2001.
He also has plans to build an OSB production line in the future, but those plans have been put back somewhat from the original 2003/4 projected start-up date in view of current heavy over-capacity for OSB in Europe.
The current jewel in the crown of Hornitex, however, is not a panel production line at all, but still represents an investment of DM100m (US$46m) at the Horn site. It is in fact a new boiler house, replicating one already built at the Beeskow site in eastern Germany.
Green energy
This energy generation plant is generating electricity from waste wood and is being held up by the state and national press as a good example of eco-friendly energy production, said Mr Künnemeyer.
The wood supply for the boiler comes from the Horn factory (a little over 50%) and from urban waste collected from the surrounding area. The urban waste is tested in a special laboratory to analyse what chemicals may be present and this determines what can be used in particleboard and what is to be burnt according to legal restrictions.
The electricity generated is supplied to the local grid and purchased back as required by the factory. For this reason it was built in cooperation with the local energy supplier, which is required by law to generate a certain percentage of its supply as 'green' power and saw the Hornitex project as good experience.
Hornitex itself uses waste wood for particleboard production and so is able to allocate the incoming wood supply either to production of boards or of energy.
"The plant employs fluidised sand bed technology which guarantees the highest level of limits for emissions from waste materials, which are probably the most strict in the world," said Mr Künnemeyer.
The secret, he explains, is that the furnace maintains an even temperature of 900oC and keeps the material in it fluid.
The furnace itself is suspended from the ceiling to allow for free expansion at these high temperatures.
"We worked with Foster Wheeler of Finland who said that you need efficient burning, rather than just any boiler and a large air cleaning plant," said Mr Künnemeyer. "All ours needs is a bag-house not a 'whole factory' for cleaning the air after the boiler."
Hornitex is paid to take the fuel which would otherwise have to go to land-fill at considerable cost something that will not be possible anyway after next year.
"State-owned waste burners charge a fortune but we can charge less, because we are gaining something as well," said Mr Künnemeyer.
"We produce electricity and steam but the whole plan will only work well if we have an MDF mill to consume a lot of steam," he said. So the steam supply for that new MDF line is already assured.
Decors for furniture
February is the time of year when German furniture designers choose the designs for the coming autumn and Hornitex holds an in-house exhibition of its latest decor ideas at this time. In fact, this year marks not only the 75th anniversary of the company, but also the 10th anniversary of the Hornitex Hausemesse.
An old factory production hall has been converted into a showroom, with plenty of natural light, and this provides a year-round facility where furniture designers can come and discuss their requirements.
Behind the showroom is a room containing laboratory printers and a small press on which prototype designs can be produced. Designers spend maybe two or three days at Horn developing new designs and Hornitex produces samples on particleboard for them in the laboratory, explained Mr Künnemeyer.
Once a year, in February, the showroom is kitted out with displays specifically for the hausemesse and Hornitex staff are on hand to discuss ideas and trends with visitors as well as offering them refreshment, of course.
"For living areas, there are various developments in wood types," said Mr Künnemeyer. "The general trend in Germany is for lighter colours, with beech remaining very popular, but we have introduced more of a 'cathedral' grain because it has always been straight grained in the past. A new idea from us is straight grained maple presented vertically or horizontally."
Apple and pear again lighter colours and birch with a pinkish hue are said to be increasingly popular and this trend was quite marked at the ZOW exhibition held at the same time in Bad Salzuflen, not far from Horn (WBPI April/May, p68).
Where designs are available in melamine papers and matching PVC foils, these were labelled accordingly in Hornitex's display.
"We are designing lighter woods with more interest more grain but not too structured from a distance," explained Mr Künnemeyer. The company uses one printing cylinder to produce the same grain effect in a variety of colours and shades.
Straight grained oak, chestnut in natural and darker shades, cherry in natural and grey shades and walnut are all proving popular.
A new line in wood grains for the company this year is teak and Mr Künnemeyer has high hopes for a return in popularity of this species again featured by a number of decor producers at the ZOW exhibition.
"The main focus this year is various surface structures, for example our ribbed metal finish," said Mr Künnemeyer. "Aluminium and brushed aluminium are already selling well.
"Our Supermatt finish is good for light colour decors, whereas a deep pore structure and slight gloss works well for darker colours."
The company also offers a 'structured gloss' which is more durable than a high gloss finish and a 'velour' which really feels like velour.
For kitchens, Hornitex offered a number of metallic finishes and solid colours as well as wood grains and a selection of worktops in various combinations. The solid colours were mainly ice blue, proving popular in Germany at the moment, greens and orange.
A clever idea, bearing in mind the craze for fridge magnets these days, is a panel with metallic backing to a wood grain or other coloured surface which still attracts magnets and can be used for refrigerator cabinet doors.
Another clever idea was a melamine paper faced panel with a logo printed in it (not surprisingly in this case it was 'Hornitex'), but only visible under ultra-violet light.
Apart from a wide range of new decors, Hornitex also used the hausemesse to display its other value-added products, such as sound deadened laminate flooring with a perforated fibreboard backing and laminate flooring with a wood grain textured/structured surface. Hofalon post-formed elements and laminates for exterior applications were also featured.
Targeted areas
There was a separate area of the Hausemesse part of the permanent display for distributors where 'collections' of decors for the trade, caravan fitting and others are each targeted on a specific product area.
At the time of our meeting in February, Mr Künnemeyer had just returned from Atlanta in the southern US where Hornitex had exhibited for the first time at 'Surfaces', the flooring exhibition there the US equivalent of the German Domotex fair. He went to the fair last year as a visitor and felt that there was potential for his company in the North American market.
"The American laminate flooring market is just beginning to develop," explained Mr Künnemeyer. "It is around 50 million m2 at the moment so it is in the early stages."
He found that the Americans seem to like a more 'rustic' look and are finding that real wood is too expensive, bearing in mind that most people do not expect their houses to last hundreds of years, as Europeans commonly do.
Mr Künnemeyer also feels that most North American mills are unlikely to go into the manufacture of laminate flooring themselves, thus leaving the way open for European manufacturers such as his company, which has considerable experience in making the product.
He plans to open an office in the US this year, initially to set up distribution for laminate flooring products but ultimately to open the market for all Hornitex's added value products.
"Home Depot in the US is opening a new store every 18 hours (seven days a week) and wants to increase that rate to one every 12 hours," said Mr Künnemeyer. "We will be looking to establish our own distributors in the US and possibly in South America too."