Meghan McBain

An internationally recognised timber design engineer with high-level credentials in structural wood research and development will assist the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia in promoting EWPAA plywood and LVL products in New Zealand.

Rotorua-based Hank Bier (BE Hons. (Civil), MSc (timber structures, London), will be the EWPAA specifier contact in New Zealand, working on behalf of the association’s members on both sides of the Tasman to promote the use of engineered wood products, especially plywood formwork as an alternative to pre-cast concrete.

“Hank is a consulting engineer who brings an incredible amount of knowledge on EWPs,” EWPAA general manager Simon Dorries said.

“He will provide EWPAA with additional market support in New Zealand, visiting specifiers, architects, major builders and territorial authorities in both the north and south islands over the next few months.”

Mr Bier will also report on research work by the EWPAA-managed Structural Timber Innovation Co (STIC), a consortium developing and commercialising new technologies that will enable structural timber to compete more effectively in the building and construction market.

During an illustrious career in the engineered wood industry, Mr Bier worked for the New Zealand Forest Research Institute (now Scion) and as manager of research and development for Carter Holt Harvey, New Zealand’s largest wood products manufacturing company.

He has prepared design guides for plywood and LVL for use in timber construction, as well as providing technical support for the design and installation of a 65 million Euros laminated veneer lumber facility in the UK.

Mr Bier is the author of more than 60 technical papers and conference presentations. He was made a Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand in recognition of his support for the development of engineered wood and education in timber engineering.

The New Zealand timber industry now has access to technical advice and information provided by the EWPAA. The free service, which includes new and updated technical data prepared by qualified engineers on plywood, LVL, particleboard and MDF, is available on the special toll-free number 0800 222 602.

Simon Dorries said technicians at the EWPAA testing laboratories in Brisbane were continuing to energise their already wide surveillance of the performance of engineered wood products in New Zealand and Australia.

“The amount of independent laboratory testing performed through the EWPAA certification system is, in most cases, significantly greater than that undertaken by many other schemes,” Mr Dorries said.

Photo: Conferring at an EWPAA product knowledge course in Brisbane. Ian Simpson, Scion Research Institute in New Zealand, Hank Bier, EWPAA’s specifier contact in New Zealand, Simon Dorries, general manager, EWPAA, and Nick Chandler, technical service manager at Aica NZ, a manufacturer of high performance adhesion and surfacing solutions.

More than 200 architects, building designers and industry leaders gathered at the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour in Sydney on September 18 for the 15^th annual Australian Timber Design Awards.

Special guest Senator Richard Colbeck, federal Secretary for Agriculture, took part in the presentations with entrants and award winners announced by MC Rebecca Gilling, human resources adviser with Planet Ark.

The coveted Sanderson Memorial Trophy for Engineered Wood Excellence, sponsored by the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia, was presented to Grimshaw Architects (in collaboration with Billard Leece Partnership) for the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity next to the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Opened this year, the institute houses a coalition of infection and immunology experts to lead the fight against infectious human diseases.

Where possible, timber was adopted as an alternative to materials with high embodied energy. Laser-cut plywood panels and timber battens were used as feature ceilings in prominent areas throughout the building, while veneers were used in the auditorium wall and ceiling linings, foyer seating, fixed office joinery, furniture and feature wall linings.

Photo: Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture Senator Richard Colbeck (right) congratulates Tara Veldman of Billard Leece Architects, Sydney, and Gilbert Yeong, Grimshaw Architects, Melbourne, joint winners of the EWPAA Geoffery Sanderson Memorial Trophy.

Rigorous stress testing completed at the EWPAA laboratories in Brisbane have confirmed the high structural strength of medium-density fibreboard.

“The tests on the characteristic structural properties of a variety of MDF grades shows, in fact, that MDF is twice as strong as machine-graded pine (MGP 10),” the general manager of the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia Simon Dorries said.

The results of the tests on the modulus of elasticity (MOE) and modulus of rupture, and shear strength bending and stiffness of MDF, will form part of a new EWPAA technical note and possibly find their way into a national building standard.

MDF is an engineered wood product made by breaking down hardwood or softwood residuals into wood fibers. It is generally denser than plywood and is stronger and much denser than particleboard.

Simon Dorries said the tests flew in the face of claims circulating in some industry sectors that MDF possessed few design properties.

“These claims have suggested, quite wrongly, that Australian manufactured MDF products are unsuitable for use as components for staircase construction,” Mr Dorries said.

“MDF boards have been used in staircases for at least 30 years without any instance of structural failure.”

Mr Dorries said it was more than likely that claims against MDF were simply a misinterpretation of Australian standards and information provided on the use of MDF in staircases.

He said some manufacturers in the solid wood sector had been using the report to suggest EWPAA did not support the use of MDF boards in staircases.

“This is certainly bending the truth,” Mr Dorries said.

He said the manufacturing standard for MDF boards (AS/NZS 1859.2) specified values for basic structural and material properties of MDF. This allowed many grades of MDF to be designed and be ‘fit for use’ in dry protected applications such as stair components, as had been the case for more than 30 years.

Producers of compliant MDF in Australia include Laminex, Borg Manufacturing and Alpine MDF Industries.

Photo: Simon Dorries, EWPAA general manager, and Andrew McLaughlin special projects engineer, rigorously test MDF samples for structural strength at the Brisbane laboratories.

Projects using engineered wood from New Zealand producers are popping up all over the rebuild blueprint for earthquake-damaged Christchurch city.

The much-anticipated plan includes key sites for major facilities, including a new 2000-capacity, three-storey convention centre by the Avon River, a huge aquatic and indoor sports facility, a revitalised city square with a new central library, office blocks, shops and restaurants.

“The Christchurch rebuild seems to be one of the few bright spots in a slow-growth market for building timbers,” says Brendan Smith, president of the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia.

“The market in New Zealand is increasingly competitive under pressure from imports, but higher volumes of particleboard and strandboard panel products are kicking in now as the pipeline to Christchurch for building materials widens,” said Mr Smith who is site manager for Juken New Zealand’s plywood and sawmill operations at Gisborne.

Juken, which has provided innovative seismic earthquake proofing systems using LVL to a new community centre in Carterton, is also winning business with products from its Triboard mill at Kaitaia in the North Island. These include a three-layered panel with a wood strand core sandwiched between an MDF outer ‘skin’, which gives a clean-lined panel of high resilience, strong impact resistance and greater stiffness than other similar products.

Mr Smith said although the company’s volumes were increasing and they were maintaining market share, “there seems to be someone new in the game every month”.

“But EWPAA members are in the market with a big advantage over many fly-by-night overseas suppliers – consistency of supply, service back-up and the all-important product guarantees, something that is seriously lacking in a lot of the imported products,” Mr Smith said.

EWPAA members and the association’s education and marketing program are pushing these attributes hard and this has turned up the volume for the ears of Worksafe NZ, the country’s tough workplace health and safety regulator.

An offshoot of the old Department of Labour, Worksafe NZ has about 350 staff located in 20 offices across New Zealand.

“New and revised Australian-NZ standards have been noted by Worksafe NZ inspectors and they are asking some very pertinent questions about certification and fit for purpose materials on building sites,” Mr Smith said.

“They are pushing for the highest safety and checking to see if planks are certified and used in a safe way.

“Some products, believed to be of Asian origin, have failed on compliance and in fact been removed from building sites, so Worksafe NZ is showing some teeth in this regard.”

Mr Smith said there would always be a preference by professional builders to work within the best guidelines.

“But we must make sure these guidelines all align with new standards in a way that’s not over-technical and that they are provided in simple, plain English.”

EWPAA general manager Simon Dorries has been making regular visits to New Zealand to update and explain new Australian-NZ standards to government building authorities such as the NZ Commerce Commission and the NZ department of Building and Housing.

“We’re talking to the right people,” Brendan Smith said.

He said imported product was here to stay and South America was ramping up supply; it was a challenge to go up against it.

“But in turn, the challenge for them is to show product and supply guarantees and their supply chains can’t provide this. There’s a lot of duck-shoving on the problem about who is responsible.

“That’s were EWPAA members shine – product responsibility, back-up, guarantees and the all-important certification and fit-for-purpose brand.

“About 70% of New Zealand’s structural plywood is still CCA treated, so if you start putting non-compliant plywood into vacuum solutions under pressure something is going to go seriously wrong with the bonding and pretty quickly and, well, there’s your first problem.”

Photos: Brendan Smith .. keeping up the standard in New Zealand.

Chinese-made flooring sold in North America has high levels of formaldehyde, according to tests done by the Hardwood Plywood and Veneer Association.

“We went into a retail store and grabbed a sample, tested it and six out of eight flunked,” says Kip Howlett, President of the HPVA, an industry association that represents Canadian and American flooring manufacturers.

When Mr Howlett started testing these floors five years ago, the levels of formaldehyde were so high, he says some were two to three times over the line.

“It was like emissions that we used to see 30 years ago,” he said.

The US state of California has tough labelling and emission rules to control formaldehyde emissions from composite wood products including floors. The US Environmental Protection Agency is expected to soon be putting out proposed rules that aim to regulate this chemical nationally.

In Canada, there are no similar set of rules. Health Canada, the government agency that regulates formaldehyde, said that since 1986 only a voluntary agreement existed between government and industry to limit formaldehyde in wood products. That limit was based on levels set almost 30 years ago, levels that are higher than rules in some US jurisdictions and the European Union.

Canada needs to get stronger rules, says Kip Howlett. “The rules are there to protect people, they’re there to protect the consumer.

“If you jack up the amount of resin, it allows you to basically take your production rate on your press and increase it by 50%. So instead of making a million panels you’ll make a million and a half panels.”

In July this year, a lawsuit filed in California against Lumber Liquidators, the biggest flooring retailer in the US, claimed that some of the company’s Chinese-made laminate floors had unacceptable levels of formaldehyde. The lawsuit says there were insufficient warning labels on these products.

According to court documents, plaintiffs tested Chinese-made floors which emitted formaldehyde at far higher rates than those manufactured in Europe or North America.

On average, Chinese products emitted at 350% the rate of European/North American products.

Lumber Liquidators has denied the allegations and said its flooring “meets relevant environmental standards and undergoes rigorous, independent, third-party testing, including those pertaining to formaldehyde emissions”.

The levels of formaldehyde are too low to trigger the need for warning labels under Proposition 65, the relevant California law, but some warnings are provided.

The HPVA was formed when the Hardwood Plywood Manufacturers Association merged with the Fine Hardwood Veneer Association in 1992. Its roots, however, lie with the Plywood Manufacturers Institute, established in 1921.

According to Kip Howlett, HPVA’s mandate is the advocacy for, promotion of, and implementation of, product performance standards on behalf of its members.

“We represent our members’ interests to government and provide education and testing to ensure their products meet the highest performance standards,” he said.

HPVA recently updated national consensus standards for hardwood plywood and engineered wood flooring for formaldehyde emission properties.

An Australian-made procurement policy by federal and state governments would “turn the tables” on shoddy furniture imports, mostly from Asia, that continue to fail Australian standards for consumer safety and trusted forest certification, FIAA general manager Dean Brakell said at AWISA 2014 in Brisbane.

“Such a policy – and other countries like Canada are doing it – would almost turn the fortunes of furniture manufacturers overnight,” Mr Brakell said.

“We are continuing to take the fight to Canberra and we’re working closely with the influential Furniture Cabinets and Joinery Alliance which met with federal Department of Industry officials at an industry forum at AWISA last week.” (A report on the forum will appear in next week’s T&F enews).

“It’s simple,” Mr Brakell said. “We want products to conform to certified sustainable forests rules, third-party accreditation and compliance with Australian building standards.

“A level playing field is a no-brainer.”

Mr Brakell said Furnishing Industry Association of Australia members had enthusiastically joined a consumer awareness campaign by the Engineered Wood Engineering Association of Australasia, which included point-of-sale fliers that guaranteed Australian and NZ engineered wood products were tested to conform to safe emission levels demanded by health authorities.

The labels have been issued to more than 500 FIAA members Australia-wide; many of them have individually repeated orders for up to 1000 ‘green label’ stickers which they attach to product packs at distribution points carrying a message that products manufactured by EWPAA members are certified Super E0, EO and E1 under a strict JAS-ANZ accredited system.

EWPAA laboratory tests have shown some imported wood panels with emissions greater than 3 mg/L, well above safe levels recommended by the federal government’s National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS).

Random testing has revealed unsafe materials are still entering the Australian market – a potentially serious problem.

A major Queensland developer has cancelled a $12 million shipment of kitchen and bathroom components from Asia after warnings the products could be blacklisted by Australian building authorities and the CFMEU.

The Asian manufacturers were unable to guarantee the joinery fixtures – ordered for the fit out of five 30-storey towers and apartment buildings on the Gold Coast – would meet Australian standards for structural safety and formaldehyde emissions.

This is believed to be the first group enforcement of its kind in Australia. Certificates showing compliance with Australian building codes and standards were demanded by the project builders, joinery and shop fitters, the site manager, the construction company, the contract administrator and the powerful CFMEU.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union, representing the building and construction, forestry and furnishing and mining and energy sectors, has more than 120,000 members and employs around 400 full time staff and officials.

Confronted with the list of building standard requirements and the possibility that the imported building products could be condemned before they left the container ship in Brisbane, the developer decided to choose kitchen and bathroom products manufactured locally.

“By using the imported products which were sure to fail Australian standards on all fronts, the developers probably would have achieved a saving of only around $500,000 on the project,” one industry analyst observed.“And had they gone ahead, the cost of non-compliance would have cost millions.”

Demands on the developer got tougher every day; the CFMEU warned if the components were not ‘legal’ they would be banned from entry to the building site and if any kitchen or bathroom component installed showed emissions higher than Australian standards they would be ripped out.”

The general manger of the Engineered Wood Products Association of Australasia Simon Dorries was heartened by the group action on imports. EWPAA is in the middle of a consumer campaign that guarantees Australian and New Zealand engineered wood products are tested to conform to safe emission levels demanded by health authorities.

The campaign, in association with the Furnishing Industry Association of Australia, includes the distribution of thousands of flyers to FIAA members carrying the message products manufactured by EWPAA members are certified Super E0, EO and E1 under a strict JAS-ANZ accredited system.

Mr Dorries said laboratory tests by EWPAA had shown some imported wood panels had emissions greater than 3 mg/L, well above safe levels recommended by the federal government’s National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS).

“Random testing reveals unsafe materials are still entering the Australian market – a potentially serious problem,” Mr Dorries said.  He said plywood and veneer wardrobes and joinery items imported from China and installed on a multi-unit building project in northern NSW were condemned after the Department of Housing found emission levels had “soared through the roof” and the health and safety of occupants was put at risk.

The project cost the developers an additional $1.3 million to replace the furniture and employ plumbers and electricians for a complete re-build after the non-compliance order.

NICNAS, which is responsible for the assessment and safe use of industrial chemicals, has advised construction workers and wood panel users against the use of products that contain formaldehyde exceeding the low emission limits of E0 and E1.  Products meeting E0 and E1 are considered safe in all applications including indoor and poorly ventilated applications.  The EWPAA maintains NATA-accredited laboratories to test for formaldehyde emissions. All EWPAA certified products are tested on a monthly basis. The schemes are accredited by the Joint Accreditation System of Australian and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ).

The average formaldehyde emission for all structural and Type A exterior plywood products produced by EWPAA certified mills is only 0.14mg/L or one-third the permitted level for E0 and approximate to the natural formaldehyde emission from timber.

Photo: Dean Brakell, general manager, Furnishing Industry Association of Australia (right) discusses the FIAA-EWPAA low-emissions sticker campaign with FIAA director Brad Willis of Clarence Valley Kitchens, South Grafton, NSW, during AWISA 2014 in Brisbane.