Customers of Danish top-end worktop makers Spekva are a demanding, discerning lot.
They expect the best, and sometimes the biggest. The company has delivered hardwood kitchen worktops up to 12m long. One had to be delivered in two sections and mounted on runners so it slid open in order that the owner could feed the tropical fish in the tank below. With that kind of customer you not only have to promise the earth, you have to deliver it. That includes a pledge that the worktops will be despatched from Denmark to fit to a tolerance of 2mm anywhere in the world.
So it’s quite a feather in the cap of modified wood that Spekva is now not only making products in the finest temperate and tropical hardwoods, but also in Lignia modified New Zealand radiata pine from Fibre7. More significantly still, the customers love the stuff, to the point that Spekva is anticipating using it for up to a third of its production.
Market feedback suggests modified wood is winning over hearts and minds. People like the fact that it has the density and durability of a hardwood, but is based on an ultra-sustainable softwood. They like the look as well apparently, and the fact that it’s often cheaper than the top-end tropical and temperate species. Intriguingly they appreciate the science part too; the fact that one natural material has been transformed into another in a kind of timber alchemy, what is more, using naturally derived substances in the process.
In our modified wood focus we report other lead manufacturers, Kebony and Accsys Technologies, also winning over customers in an increasingly broad range of markets. The material in its various guises is being used for everything from cladding and decking, to joinery, laminated products, flooring, furniture and veneer. The latest addition, exterior grade MDF, based on Accsys’s modified Tricoya fibre, opens up yet more avenues.
One reason for modified timber’s growing market traction is that its performance in use is increasingly proven and producers can show it does what they promised it would.
The ever rising pressure on the sector to prove the sustainability and legality of its products is playing into the hands of modified wood too, based as it is on temperate softwoods – and hardwoods too – with easy-to-prove sound environmental credentials. And the consensus is that the anti-illegal timber EU Timber Regulation will give added impetus to demand, as importers write off the riskier hardwood sources. Modified wood suppliers stand ready to step in with the alternatives.
The producers are continuing to broaden their offer too, as they perfect the modification process for a wider range of species; Kebony has just introduced a radiata pine version and Accoya an alder. Meanwhile, Lignia has launched a new xd variant for exterior use.
Accsys also says that the acetylated Tricoya wood fibre, which has first come to market as Coillte Panel Products’ Medite Tricoya MDF, could be used as a feedstock for other types of wood-based panels.
To date modified wood production volumes have been relatively limited, but that could be about to change too, as manufacturers look to the next stage of market development; licensing other companies around the world to use their patented processes to make their products in an even wider range of species.
All of which adds another weapon to the armoury of the wider timber trade to take on rival materials and grow the market for wood.
