by Web Editor | Nov 29, 2018 | News
Freres Lumber Builds For The Future With New Mass Plywood Panels
Tyler Freres, vice president of sales for Freres Lumber Co., walked through a new manufacturing plant between Mill City and Lyons, off of Cedar Mill Road, and pointed out a stack of wood panels destined for Oregon State University this week. “I don’t even think we’ve started to tap the products and the projects we can make out of this,” Freres said.
Freres Lumber Co.’s mass plywood panels were certified for use at the end of July, and the product is already being used in buildings and for other construction purposes. And Freres is thinking big. “We have quite a bit of projects in the works, probably 14 to 16 projects quoted,” said Freres, whose ideas led to the creation of the mass plywood panels by his family’s company.
The OSU shipment is the final delivery of the panels to be used in two new buildings that will form the Oregon Forest Science Center on campus, which is estimated to cost $80 million and scheduled to open in the fall of 2019.
The mass plywood panels will be used for the roof of the George W. Peavy Forest Science Center, and for the interior and exterior walls of the nearby A.A. “Red” Emmerson Advanced Wood Products Laboratory.
Both buildings are showcasing innovative wood products made in Oregon, and the mass plywood panels are the latest entry into the market. Freres Lumber was only the third United States producer of mass timber panels to meet the Engineered Wood Association’s standards.
From the Corvallis Gazette-Times: gazettetimes.com.
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by Web Editor | Jan 24, 2018 | News
While heavy rains were pelting Santiam Canyon Thursday afternoon, Jan. 18, there was a warm bustle of activity at one brightly-lit site between Lyons and Mill City.
Albany Eastern Railroad pulled into a rail stall. Representatives from a German manufacturer were fine-tuning equipment inside a covered, 4-acre plant. Employees of Freres Lumber worked with the visitors in a month-old mill to test tools ready to crank out an innovative product.
It’s been a busy year for the 95-year-old Freres Lumber Company: the construction of one mill; a blazing destruction of a drying facility, which was promptly rebuilt and is back in operation; and the marketing of a new product, Mass Plywood Panel. “This past year has been a trial for all of us,” Tyler Freres, the company’s vice president of sales, said as workers eddied around him tending to tasks, tackling everything from computer inputs to judicial placements of mass-panel resins.
The new Mass Plywood Panel plant grew from conception to a running entity in roughly 2 ½ years, including meeting an ambitious construction timeline. “We broke ground in March of 2017, and we had our first panel out in December of 2017,” Freres said, “And, of course, there was that fire in between.”
He saluted the busy crew scattered around the facility. “We couldn’t have done it without these guys,” he said. “Overall, it’s complicated to figure out all the details in a new plant, and these guys have been able to figure it out. It’s not as easy as it sounds.”
From the Statesman Journal: https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/local/stayton/2018/01/20/freres-looks-future-production-mass-plywood-panels-santiam-canyon/1048864001/
by Web Editor | Jul 24, 2017 | News
It’s been 20 years since the first containers of AraucoPly plywood made their way from Chile to the United States in 1997. Arauco celebrated the anniversary in a special event held at its booth during AWFS Fair 2017.
The company said despite temporary setbacks caused by the economic downturn in 2008 and a wildfire that devastated one of its manufacturing plants in 2012, AraucoPly has made giant strides in growing its customer base throughout the United States and Canada. Michael Vincent, director of Import Panels – Arauco North America, noted that the United States and Canada now account for 40 percent of AraucoPly’s worldwide sales.
The plywood panels are made from 100 percent radiata pine, grown in the company’s own FSC-certified, sustainably managed forests and composed of cores using exterior PF resins for flatness and stability, Arauco said.
As part of the anniversary, Arauco is introducing factory-primed AraucoPly panels at the 2017 AWFS Fair in booth 4609. Primed AraucoPly Siding, Beaded and Sanded products are offered with a consistent, full-coverage prime on five sides (edges included) and a smooth, sanded back. The company says the primed option was introduced in response to growing market demand for the time-saving advantage of a factory-primed wood surface.
Also featured at AWFS, Arauco’s Prism TFL collection has expanded its North American distribution of the exclusive Taction Oak collection. The company says the oak’s natural characteristics are captured and replicated using Embossed in Register (EIR) technology, resulting in a finished panel that rivals the look and feel of wood. Offered in five contemporary colors, Taction Oak coordinates with Prism Accentz neutrals. The Prism collection features more than 80 styles, including 59 exclusive designs.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/awfs/awfs-news/araucoply-commemorates-20-years-north-america
by Web Editor | Jun 22, 2017 | News
A $250,000 grant from the U.S. Forest Service will help Freres Lumber Co. bring its veneer-based massive plywood panels to the market.
Announced late last year, Freres Lumber says its massive plywood panels (MPP) could be used for floors and walls in multi-story commercial buildings, and they could be made to order. Freres hopes its panels will revolutionize the construction industry.
“We were recently informed that our mass plywood plant was named the Forest Service’s top project in the U.S.,” Freres executive VP Rob Freres said. “This was a competitive process with 114 grant applications submitted for consideration.”
Designed to be an alternative to cross-laminated timber, Freres’ massive panels can be as much as 12 feet wide and 2 feet thick. Freres says there are many potential benefits.
Structures made of MPP could be made in days instead of months, says Freres, and use 20-30 percent less wood than cross-laminated timber. The lightweight nature of MPP could reduce truckload transport costs. Large format panels could be manufactured at a facility to include window, door, and all other required cut-outs – minimizing waste and labor on the job site.
From Woodworking Network: https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/wood/panel-supply/freres-lumbers-massive-plywood-panels-receive-big-grant
by Web Editor | Nov 30, 2016 | News
A new massive plywood building panel developed by an Oregon company and tested at Oregon State University may be the largest such product ever manufactured.
Builders are familiar with standard plywood sheets that measure 4-feet wide, 8-feet long and between a quarter-inch and more than one-inch thick. The new panels made by the Freres Lumber Company of Lyons, Oregon, can be as much 12-feet wide, 48-feet long and 2-feet thick.
The company announced its new panels in October, capping more than a year of development and performance testing at Oregon State’s Advanced Wood Products Laboratory. “The results look very promising,” said Ari Sinha, assistant professor in OSU’s College of Forestry, who oversaw the tests. “This is a unique product with the potential for creating jobs in rural Oregon.”
Versatility is one of the benefits of the product known as a Mass Plywood Panel (MPP). “These panels can be customized for different applications. Because they have very good compression qualities, they could be used for columns as well as panels,” said Sinha. The veneer manufacturing process enables manufacturers to orient wood grain and to distribute the defects found in smaller trees, such as knots, in a way that maintains the strength of the final product, Sinha added.
Tests in Sinha’s lab focused on the panels’ structural and physical properties such as density, adhesive bonding and resistance to the kinds of vertical and horizontal stresses experienced in an earthquake. Additional tests are planned after the first of the year. Mass Plywood Panels can achieve the performance characteristics of a similar product known as Cross Laminated Timber panels with 20 to 30 percent less wood.
From Phys.org: https://phys.org/news/2016-11-prototype-plywood-panels-world-largest.html
