The market is a buzz with new plant brought in Hoshiarpur by Savitri Woods India Pvt Ltd. The Ply Reporter reached out to promoters of Savitri Woods to enquire about what is so different that North India manufacturing fraternity is talking about it. The company Savitri Woods is the largest plywood manufacturing facility under one roof that has adopted the most latest and much needed technology/process which majority of the plywood manufacturers in India doesn’t assume.
According to Director Mr Gopal Bansal, ‘It is irony of the Indian plywood industry that around 90% of plywood is made in India is with conventional way of manufacturing which was started way back in 18th century’. On the contrast if we talk about other countries or developed markets then this figure gets reveresed, where almost 90% plywood manufactured world over is made with the standards which Savitri Woods has adopted.
Mr Bansal proudly says that ‘Savitri Woods doesn’t term this technology as new age or modern, because according to his belief, the technology and processes implemented by Savitri Woods to produce WIGWAM range actually should be the basic standard for manufacturing plywood. In conventional way of manufacturing the thickness of plywood panel varies between (+/- 5%),where as plywood made with both side calibration can result (+/-1%) thickness tolerance. That is why many of the quality plywood buyers and customers in India are importing plywood from China, Russia, Europe, Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesia. Savitri Woods is very confident to present this plant at par with such manufacturers who manufacture plywood the way it should be. That is why the theme line behind Savitri Woods brand “WIGWAM” is ‘PLY AS IT SHOULD BE”.
Explaining further Mr. Bansal adds “Without autoloader for hot press the normal time for loading a composed loose plywood panel in hot press is atleast 2-3 minutes which can clearly indicate the manual loading process leads to unidentical finished product in a single batch”. Consistency in quality has been the biggest challenge to this industry for decades, even the initiators of plywood in India face the consistency in quality related issues very often’ thus Savitri Woods new plant is all about minimising the errors at production process. The idea of setting up such kind of manufacturing facility is to deliver the consistent product to the society/industry and create a benchmark for quality in mid segment.
Processes like Tenderising, four times pressing and both side calibration has been adopted and are very important.
The Plant established by Savitri Woods is the first of its kind that has a dozen 9 ft Glue Spreaders with 6 Fully Automatic Core Composer, a dozen Panel Scarf Jointers and 6 Cold Presses. The perfectly led and automatic process flow designed plant has minimal human involvements that largely focus on quality checking. All the materials handling in the plant is done by Forklift and Scissor Lifts. Savitri Woods is using only pre-composed core and panel joined with automatic imported machines for making plywood which actually means full core
and full panel of 8’x4’. With the help of all advanced and required machines it has become possible for Savitri Woods to install 25 daylights hot presses for making general purpose plywood adds Mr. Gopal Bansal during The Ply Reporter’s team visit.
Consistency in quality has been the biggest challenge to this industry for decades, even the initiators of plywood in India face the consistency in quality related issues very often’ thus
Savitri Woods new plant is all about minimising the errors at production process.
Auto loader for the hot press, both side calibrator are the most essential machines which are a must for manufacturing plywood in modern age’ and Savitri Woods has made sure that these things work in tandem with volumes needed to run the plant.
‘The Ply Reporter’ could see valid point in the rational as the industry in India operate totally on juvenile plantation timber. Savitri Woods promises to manufacture WIGWAM with all the required standards and processes which it claims. The plant establishment is undoubtedly good enough to produce the claimed USP’s. Overall vision of having a large single manufacturing facility with such developments in a place like Hoshiarpur where raw material availability does not pose any immediate scarcity makes this plant worth writing about. Savitri Woods new plant that has a spread over 9 acres is an example for the plywood industry where quality manufacturing is not just claimed but it is being practically done.