28/09/05 PETALING JAYA, (Bernama) -- Plywood made from oil palm trunks caneasily be marketed in the United States, United Kingdom and Japan due toits environment-friendliness, lightness and easy to work with concept thatthe commodity carries.

Hence, it is a viable venture for the palm oil industry, given that theannual availability of oil palm trunks is estimated to be around 13.6million logs based on 100,000 hectares of replanting each year, said AnisMokhtar, Kamarudin Hassan and Choo Yuen May in their presentation at theInternational Palm Oil Congress 2005 here.

All three of them are from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB).

They said under the specific controlled processing conditions tomanufacture oil palm plywood, total logs available could be converted into4.5 million cubic metres of plywood.

To date, Business Esprit Sdn Bhd has successfully manufactured andcommercialised the oil palm plywood with the technical and collaborativesupport of MPOB and the government to facilitate the production andcommercialisation of the product.

Business Esprit, based in Penang, has a capacity of around 2,000 cubicmetres of plywood output per month at the current stage.

The facility will be upgraded to produce a capacity of 5,000 cubic metresper month in the future.

The company, which is the leading oil palm plywood manufacturer inMalaysia, exports its products to North America, Europe, West Asia, EastAsia and Southeast Asia.

Oil palm trunks, which are used for the manufacturing of plywood, arecollected during replanting.

Selections of logs are based on the straightness of the trunk anduniformity of the diameter the bottom and the top end.

The oil palm trunks go through various levels of processing, includingveneer peeling, drying, gluing and pressing, after which it will be sandedusing sanding machine with the capacity of 420 pieces per hour.

-- BERNAMA