GRAYLING, Mich. - Arauco, investing in the construction of its massive particleboard plant with a planned capacity of 800,000 square meters per year in Grayling, Michigan, has purchased for the first time a complete plant from Dieffenbacher.

The two companies decided to work together in January 2016, followed by a phase of detailed engineering and concluding with the signing of supply contracts at the end of 2016.

The highlights of the scope of supply are Dieffenbacher’s EVOjet P gluing system, which reportedly uses up to 15 percent less glue; and the continuous CPS+ press, which, at 10 feet wide and 52.5 meters long, will be one of the largest particleboard presses in the world.

"Arauco always exercises prudence when it comes to committing to new development. Therefore, we are all the more pleased with the confidence that Arauco has shown in us with its decision to choose the CPS+," says Bernd Bielfeldt, head of the Wood Business Unit at Dieffenbacher.

The two driers, together with the associated energy system that Chile-based Arauco also commissioned from Dieffenbacher, are large parts of the new operation. Grayling is located in the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.

The contract also includes dosing silos for the chips, a glue mixing station, forming stations and the forming line; as well as the raw board handling system, the sanding line and the Lukki bearing system, which Arauco has already had experience with at its other sites.

The new production site in Grayling will manufacture particleboard panels with a thickness of 6–40 mm, intended almost exclusively for furniture production. Arauco owns large tracts of forestry land in South America and operates numerous sawmills, plywood mills, pulp mills and power plants, and has systematically expanded its commitment in the area of wood-based panel production over the past few years.

Thanks to its acquisition of the Flakeboard group in North America and its share in the Portuguese Sonae Group, Arauco has now become the second-largest producer of wood-based panels in the world. See http://www.arauco-na.com/ or http://www.dieffenbacher.de/en.