TANASOTE gains BPR authorisation
11 May 2021TANASOTE S40, Lonza Wood Protection’s new oil based wood preservative, has gained Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR) authorisation for its use as a high performance treatment for the long term protection of heavy duty industrial timbers, such as utility poles, railway sleepers and hard landscaping timbers. Authorisation for Tanasote S40 has now been granted in both Sweden and Belgium. Further authorisations throughout Europe and the UK will follow shortly.
Developed as a hot oil/copper based technology with an innovative and powerful new co-biocide to protect against a wide spectrum of aggressive copper tolerant decay organisms, TANASOTE S40 (more commonly known as TANASOTE) has an excellent industry fit as it can be used in existing or new creosote type plants and provide an assured service life of up to 40 years.
“If the timber industry is to keep wood as a primary material of choice in important high risk applications, it needs to be bold and adopt modern and innovative BPR approved alternatives that will confidently deliver both high performance and sustainability,” said Dr Stephen Uphill, Technical Lead – Application and Innovation for Lonza’s European Wood Protection business.
“TANASOTE is an exciting and proven alternative that will meet these criteria. An innovative preservative system from our experienced development team, TANASOTE is designed to meet the future needs of the high performance timber sectors and is now a real alternative for the agricultural, utility pole and railway sleepers industries whilst meeting the stringent risk assessments of the BPR.”
“Three independent life-cycle studies have been conducted with excellent resulting credentials across the board for TANASOTE compared to competing materials such as steel, concrete and fibre glass. And all the ancillary properties, such as conductivity and corrosivity of metal fixings, highlighted by the markets sectors, are all similar to traditional creosote treated timbers.”
Extensive Efficacy Testing
Whilst going through the intensive BPR authorisation process, TANASOTE treated timbers have been placed in various industry relevant field trials around the world to prove its performance credentials. The new preservative has also been used in full scale commercial treatment trials to fine tune its application and required protection levels across a wide range of timber species.
“It has always been our business philosophy to fully field trial our new products before we bring them to market to ensure a real world performance for our customers,” said Dr Hannah Griffiths, Lonza’s product development technical lead. “We are really excited about the results we are achieving with our TANASOTE treated timber trials.”
“The preservative treatment into the timbers is really deep, consistent and very impressive. The initial colour of the treated timbers is a darker green than normal preservative treated timbers but that quickly weathers down to match in with what we and our customers would expect. What does not weather down is the water repellent properties of the TANASOTE treated timbers as the preservative treatment is oil based. One of our agricultural fencing timber trial projects is now well into its second year and the water repellency feature is still very strong.”
Extensive efficacy testing has shown that TANASOTE treated timbers will deliver a service life of up to 40 years and are non-hazardous to human and animal health, and to the environment.
