From June 18 to 21 took place in Bruges (Belgium), the annual meeting of the European Panel <\/b>Federation<\/b> (Epf), the most important time of year to take stock of the state of an industry that each year in the European produces a turnover of € 22 billion with over 5,000 companies employing more than 100 thousand people.
\nThe meeting highlighted the good performance in the first quarter of 2014 with the growth of the main types of wood-based panel: chipboard <\/b>+3 <\/b>percent, <\/b>Mdf +3 percent, <\/b>Osb <\/b>+6 <\/b>percent<\/b>. Positive results which give hope of an imminent recovery in the sector even if the persistence of some structural problems continue to penalize it. Among these, the most worrying is definitely the increasing difficulty in obtaining raw material for the production of the panels due to the still strong competition from biomass power plants. On this point has been great concern expressed by industry people, as each year the European industry of woodworking uses 38.8 million cubic meters of industrial waste wood and recycled wood 15.5 million.
\n“The strong pressure <\/i>of <\/i>biomass power plants<\/i>, which continue to <\/i>enjoy <\/i>government incentives<\/i>, <\/i>has led to a <\/i>dramatic shortage of <\/i>raw material <\/i>at a European level <\/i>that impacts <\/i>the entire <\/i>wood industry, <\/i>furniture <\/i>included<\/i>, <\/i>and its competitiveness<\/i>,” says Paolo <\/b>Fantoni<\/b>, president of Assopannelli and the Epf Economic working group coordinator.
\n“At this point<\/i>, in order to <\/i>solve a problem that <\/i>is becoming <\/i>every year <\/i>more and more serious<\/i>, I feel <\/i>the <\/i>urgent <\/i>implementation of the <\/i>Resolution <\/i>of <\/i>Dresden <\/i>in June <\/i>2010 with the <\/i>Epf <\/i>members <\/i>who <\/i>have asked <\/i>the European authorities to <\/i>promote the use <\/i>“<\/i>in <\/i>cascade” <\/i>of wood <\/i>that <\/i>would give priority <\/i>to the reuse <\/i>and recycling <\/i>compared <\/i>to combustion. <\/i>Pending <\/i>successful interventions in <\/i>this direction<\/i> – continued Fantoni − I hope <\/i>that Europe <\/i>should follow the example <\/i>of some countries <\/i>that <\/i>have opted <\/i>for<\/i> enabling <\/i>new power plants <\/i>to <\/i>operate without <\/i>government subsidies<\/i>”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From June 18 to 21 took place in Bruges (Belgium), the annual meeting of the European Panel Federation (Epf), the most important time of year to take stock of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n