U.S. – On August 24th the first MDF board was produced at Swiss Krono Group’s factory in Barnwell, South Carolina, USA.

For site manager Erik Christensen, this was a very special milestone: “It’s an exciting time here in Barnwell as we successfully ran our first boards this weekend! We’ve got an incredibly dedicated and energized team here and it was great to share this big milestone in the project together. We are now focused on getting the line into production mode as quickly as possible to supply our growing flooring demand and our newly developing HDF/MDF customers. Our new plant is a significant game changer for us in the US market enabling us to profitably grow our market position.”

Since spring 2016, the Swiss Krono plant at the Barnwell site has been expanded extensively in order to strengthen the HDF and laminate divisions throughout the Group.

The new plant will have a production capacity of around 280,000 cubic meters of HDF, which is intended primarily for laminate production in the company’s own plant. The new plant will add an additional 26 million square meters. With these actions, Swiss Krono Group is responding to the growing demand on the American market for high-quality laminate flooring.

Roland Kovacic, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and member of the Group Executive Board, is delighted: “The project implementation in the USA was extremely demanding for everyone involved. I would like to wholeheartedly thank the entire project team, which also mastered difficult challenges well.