“The knife ring flakers with FlowOptimizer are doing a great job.”

Customer: Novopan, Quito (Ecuador)

Novopan del Ecuador's particleboard business is closely linked with the Swiss Fahrni Institute. In the 1940s, Fred Fahrni from Zurich developed three-layer particleboard and established a license model for his Novopan trademark. When Novopan del Ecuador built its first single-opening particleboard line in 1978, it was designed by Fahrni. In 2005 to 2007, the company moved to continuous production when it retired the single-opening line and bought its first continuous particleboard prodcution line.

That’s how we helped Novopan get ahead

“In July 2017, we began discussions with the potential suppliers for our second particleboard line. The Dieffenbacher team flew in several times, and we successfully combined our technology design concepts with Dieffenbacher’s concepts. There were some difficult questions on the table for us. For example, in the forming station, we came from the mechanical ClassiFormers, but Dieffenbacher also offered us their WindFormers. Now we have the best of both, the mechanical and the WindFormers, and the board surface is better than in line one. We also have better edges and a uniform core layer that is more customer-friendly.”

“The quality of the boards isn’t made in the forming station or the press but in the material preparation line. We already had Maier machines for the preparation line of our first plant in 1978, so we knew their quality. The woodyard and chipping equipment is excellent, especially the knife ring flakers with FlowOptimizer, which are doing a great job in flake preparation.” Cesar Alvarez (CEO of Novopan del Ecuador)