Steaming – Drying – Conditioning: The key to first class beechwood

 
In many countries, there are wood processors, who will react in a similar way to seeing a knot in the wood. They will throw their hands up in horror shouting something like “look at the knot. Oh my god, the wood is bad”. However, the truth is quite the contrary. A knot can easily be removed. Fundamentally more important for the wood and thus the final products, is a careful and homogeneous drying process. Pollmeier has perfected this process and is investing a lot of know-how, funds and time in it. Pollmeier?
 
 
The German company Pollmeier has its roots in the production of edge-glued panels and solid wood flooring. As a processor of solid wood, the company learned the hard way that it was next to impossible to buy beechwood in a consistently high quality.
Therefore, Pollmeier started its first own sawmill in 1995 in the Thuringian town of Creuzburg, to this day the headquarters of the Pollmeier group. Right from the beginning, Pollmeier specialized in one wood species only: European beech.
 
Today, Pollmeier is operating the three most efficient hardwood sawmills in the world and has become the world’s market leader for sawn beech timber. Every day, well over 1.000 m³ of sawn beech timber are produced and exported to more than 70 countries.
 
 
This dizzying success has only been made possible by Pollmeiers' absolute commitment to a consistently high level of quality. By constantly optimizing and perfecting the production process, the leading edge quality of Pollmeier beechwood was achieved. Again, especially the steaming and drying stages of production are decisive for important quality parameters of sawn timber.
 
                Pollmeier colour tone
 
For many applications, wood processors nowadays need boards with a uniform colour across all thicknesses. Differences in the colour of individual boards will result in an unwanted zebra-effect in the final products, for example furniture.
 
With its technically fully developed steaming process and a whole lot of experience, Pollmeier produces the basis for the technical drying as well as for the uniform, clearly defined, light colour tone called „lightly steamed“. Greying of the boards, which does occur frequently in unsteamed beechwood, is prevented and all the boards get the same light colour – the Pollmeier colour tone. It has been matched to the standard colour of lightly steamed veneers, so that Pollmeier beechwood can easily be combined with veneers and final products of other manufacturers. In addition, steaming provides for a higher stability of the colour in the final products.