CANADA – Canadian wooden panel manufacturer Norbord stands out among its peers by posting the best performance figures of the 2017 Notifix Index®.

This index is the performance evaluation of the seven main international manufacturers of wood panels that publish comparable results: Arauco, Duratex, Eucatex, Masisa, Norbord, Pfleiderer and Sonae.

Compared with 2016, Norbord stood out in terms of sales growth (+ 23.3%), EBITDA (+ 74.5%), as well as EBITDA margin improvement (+9.0 percentage points).

In sales growth, Norbord was followed by Chilean Masisa and the German/Polish Pfleiderer with improvements of 10.2% and 8.3% respectively. Portuguese Sonae Industria recorded the biggest drop in sales in 2017 (-4.1%), followed by Brazilian Duratex (-3.1%).

In 2017, the Chilean company Arauco was second in terms of EBITDA growth (+29.9%), ahead of Eucatex (+14.4 %) and Duratex (+11.6%). Masisa (-40.5%) had the biggest drop in EBITDA compared to 2016.

As for the EBITDA margin, after the marked improvement of Norbord in 2017, up 9.0 percentage points as compared to 2016, Arauco was second with an improvement of 4.0 percentage points. Masisa was the only board manufacturer among the Notifix Index with a drop in EBITDA margin in 2017 (-3.7 p.p.) when compared to 2016.