Söderhamn Eriksson AB has signed a €11m contract with James Jones & Sons to supply machinery for the Scottish sawmiller’s planned new £20m mill at Lockerbie.
The sawline will be the fifth plant Eriksson has delivered to James Jones since its first contract with the company in 1983. It is also Eriksson’s biggest UK order.
Last month James Jones unveiled plans for the new mill, which it said would be “one of the most advanced sawmills operating in Europe”.
The order comprises debarking, log intake, sawline, edging and waste handling, with the sawline featuring advanced technology for log and cant feeding, reducing, bandsawing and edging. Total annual production on a single shift will be 140,000m³.
Eriksson said great emphasis had been given to creating a processing line which minimised production cost through optimum sawn yields of each log and maximum versatility.
“All orders are important but when it’s a customer who we have worked with so much in the last 25 years then we are very keen to keep them,” said Eriksson’s Torbjörn Jacobsson.
The machinery will be supplied in early 2009, with production starting in the autumn of the same year.
German packaging machinery manufacturer Kallfass will also be supplying equipment for the new mill.
Eriksson said it supplies on average one new sawline to the UK every year, with other customers including BSW Timber, RF Giddings and MR Ellis Timber.
Other recent orders for Eriksson include a new €5.5m sawline for Austrian glulam manufacturer Mosser Holzindustrie, a €2.7m contract for Barrus in Estonia and a €3m upgrade for Setra Trävaror’s sawmill in Nyby, Sweden.
