SOUTH AFRICA – South Africa’s PG Bison, the country’s leading manufacturer of wood-based panel products, has announced on 17 November 2020 a USD 130 million capital investment to be rolled out over the next three years.

The capital projects include a major capacity expansion to PG Bison’s existing facilities in eMkhondo (Piet Retief), Mpumalanga, as well as an additional new medium density fiberboard (MDF) plant at the same location.

“In the wake of COVID-19, we’ve seen increased appetite for import replacement, and an uptick in people investing into their homes as remote work becomes the norm,” says PG Bison CEO Gerhard Victor. “We have been investing in upgrading our eMkhondo operations since 2017, through a multi-stage capital investment program to help us increase our production capacity and ensure that we can sustainably supply the long-term local market demand.”

PG Bison is investing an additional USD 36 million into a new front-end dryer for its particleboard plant. This will significantly increase capacity, taking the eMkhondo plant to more than 1000m³ per day of particleboard production.  This additional investment comes after the USD 39 million already spent on a new Siempelkamp ContiRoll press and forming line. The project is due for completion by December 2021

The next stage in the company’s plans is to build a new additional MDF plant. The project will commence in 2022 and is expected that the first wooden panel off the line in the middle of 2023. A total of USD 92 million will be invested in this new plant.

“Currently, we produce 400m³ per day at our MDF plant in Boksburg. With the new additional plant coming online, we will ramp this up by 200% with an additional 800m³ per day of MDF. This will give PG Bison a total installed capacity on MDF of 1200m³ per day between our two MDF plants” says Victor. “we believe the effects of these investments will be significant, contributing to creation of direct and indirect jobs, as well as skills and enterprise development and further local partnerships.”