Urufor S.A. – 20 years ago in Uruguay large reforestation projects, mostly with Eucalyptus Grandis had been started, in the case of our customer Cofusa/Urufor on now 25.000 ha land.
In contrast to Europe, the scenery can change drastically within one generation in such a country with the appropriate climate conditions, with large-scale land holdings and private initiative. The tree growth after 3 thinnings and 2 prunings can reach a large end diameter of 60 cm within just 20 years. Applications for the very uniform lumber are flooring boards, furniture and semi-finished components like stair treads or window components.
Due to the increasing log supply from their own forest, Urufor S.A. has to increase the processing capacity of approximately 250 m³ per day of their existing sawmill in Rivera, close to the Brazilian border, drastically. After an appropriate planning phase EWD could close an order in November 2007 for the supply of a complete reducer band sawmill.
The civil works for an object of such a size in the more agricultural hinterland of Uruguay provided quite a challenge, since for instance all foundations and building columns had to be cast with concrete made on site without ready mix concrete available. Installation of the new machinery finally started in April 2009 and the first logs had been sawn on the reducer bandsaw line and the optimizing edger system in mid September 2009. Right thereafter the commissioning of the band resaw group started.
The line consists of 2 reducer twin bandsaw groups with merry-go-round, on 1800 mm twin band resaw, also with a merry-go-round system and the automatic optimizing edger system OptiDriveLine. This concept allows to cut around the core with random width boards to take into account the varying log properties and the high inner stress of the fast growing logs. Apart from the high quality boards sawn from the outer part of the log, the line produces a four-sided cant of the core which is resawn and finished in a down-stream system to pallet boards.
Design capacity of the sawmill is 200.000 m³ log intake per year, which is required for the log volume available form the plantations from the years 2011/2012 on. For EWD this installation is the 5th. complete new sawmill build in South America.
