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3.5.2 Kohiwood Wood Processing Factory

Oy Kohiwood LTD is a wood processing company in Soini, Finland. Main products are high quality wooden glulam panels for the furniture industry and building construction materials. The factory has a sawmill and it also produces sawn timber. Main raw material is Finnish pine, but also small amounts of Finnish spruce in small size logs are used. All the used wood is PEFC-certified. The certification ensures, that the used wood is sustainably produced and legally, qualitatively, economically and ecologically harvested. During the process the glulam is quality sorted by a robotized machine camera qualification system, that ensures the optimal effectivity in use of timber material. The glue used is non-toxic and non-hazardous to health and environment. The waste in the process is minimized and crushed to be used as biofuel.

The factory handles abt. 1300 fixed m3 of wood daily. Side products are bark, wood chips and sawdust. Bark is used as biofuel and partly burned in the Kohiwood’s own power plant and partly sold to other power plants. Wood chips are sold to pulp mills for pulp and paper production. Sawdust is partly used as biofuel in own and customers power plants and partly processed to wooden biofuel pellets. Kohiwood needs heating energy around the year due to drying timber in 12 pcs of kilning rooms and also in wintertime for heating the factory facilities.  All heating energy is produced by biofuel.

The circulation process needs large partnership network, because the capacity to partners demand varies seasonally, but the factory is operating all year round. Some partners have also different kinds of requirements for processing the side material to be suitable for their technology.

In a wood processing factory like Kohiwood the optimized circulation and utilization of all materials are significant and the sales prices from side products are a very important part of the income of the company. Effective circulation is the only way to be competitive and profitable in tight global business competition. 

For future development Kohiwood is going to inspect possibilities to build a new combined biofuel power plant to produce heat and also electricity. The future aim is to produce all the electrical energy for the production process in its own power plant and get more benefit and added value for side products by using the biofuel for electricity production without loading and transportation.