Century Plyboards (India) Ltd has planned to set up a medium density fibreboards manufacturing unit in Hoshiarpur, Punjab. Sanjay Agarwal, MD, told BusinessLine that the ₹440-crore project would be completed by the end of the current financial year.

The project will mark the entry of the company into the MDF space; MDF is an alternative to plyboards in furniture making, and building of partition or ceiling panels.

The company has purchased 32 acres of private land for the project.

The project will have a capacity to produce 1.98 lakh cubic metres-a-year of MDF. It will also have a plywood and block board unit with an initial capacity of 17,000 cubic metres.

Agarwal said the company plans to enhance the plywood manufacturing capacity at the Hoshiarpur project to 51,000 cubic metres by the middle of 2017-18.

“We have obtained permission for the plywood manufacturing unit based on the local agro-forestry based resources,” he explained.

Sourcing of raw material or wood and its cost are the crucial issues for plywood manufacturing.

MDF, which is made of easily available wood chips and bound by resins, can avoid the key raw material linkage.

Chennai facility Meanwhile, Century Plyboards has set up a ₹60-crore greenfield particleboard unit in Chennai.

Particleboard, made of timber waste or saw mill dust too, does not require timber as primary raw material. This unit, housed in the company’s existing pre-lamination board units in Chennai, will start commercial production shortly.

“We are waiting for the power connection to the new unit to be established,” Agarwal added.

A ban on logging and the prohibition of unprocessed timber exports have prompted Century Plyboards to import processed raw material from South-East Asia.

The company has set up five timber-processing units in Laos and one in Myanmar through step-down subsidiaries.

The company is also planning to establish two units in Indonesia as well as one in Vietnam.

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