02 Aug 2012
August 2, 2012

‘Porcupine Partnership’

August 2, 2012

– NEWS RELEASE –

BSW Timber and AV Birch’s ‘Porcupine Partnership’ Is Set To
Penetrate the Timber Treatment Market

BSW Timber, in partnership with AV Birch, is to launch state-of-the-art incising technology to help meet the growing demand for improved durability performance of pressure impregnated timber products such as fence posts, deck joists and garden sleepers.

The Porcupine Incising range of machinery has been developed by BSW and their partner AV Birch to solve an age-old industry challenge of penetration and retention in treated timber products. Up to now, the main technology available to achieve this was from the North America. Sourcing machinery from the USA traditionally has brought many technical, logistical and commercial challenges for the UK market.

Now the Partnership’s new Porcupine technology is set to transform the timber treatment market by offering bespoke incising machinery which conforms to all European health and safety legislation and can be applied to European timber species and products.

The Incising ProcessThe technology has been developed for the treatment plant operator market, in both large and small volume operations. The incising technology acts as a pre-treatment mechanical process using bespoke blades which are inserted into the timber face. The Porcupine machinery passes the sawn timber through blades giving a consistent pattern of incisions that are applied to each face of the product. This process significantly enhances the chemical penetration and retention in the subsequent treatment process.

Launching the new Porcupine Incising machines, Alex Brownlie Director and Head of Business Development, said: “BSW has used its processing expertise of many years to provide a technically novel solution that helps provide improved durability and performance of a wide range of timber products while ably supported by the engineering expertise of AV Birch. This is demonstrated by the recent success of easi-post₁₅ in achieving Benchmark accreditation, the WPA Quality Assurance scheme and an industry first.

“We are already in dialogue with several major sawmilling companies across the UK, and we will be looking to expand sales opportunities across the wider timber treatment industry in the British Isles with export sales potential into European markets in the future.”

Vince Jones, Director of AV Birch, said: “By establishing the partnership between AV Birch and BSW Timber, the Porcupine Partnership is able to offer a complete after sales servicing and support facility for the fully Warranted machines. Furthermore the Porcupine Partnership will also supply bespoke developed replacement incising blades moving forward which ensure the required incision pattern, depth and density are achieved.”

The Porcupine Incising machine’s feed speed, incision pattern, density and depth can all be varied depending on the target market and product. Each machine has incising heads on each face of the timber, a synchronised system for incising patterns during production, ergonomically designed features to allow uninhibited access to the heads for quick blade changing as well as an “easy lift” crane to change incising blades and complete distance guarding.

The machines have a specially designed knife system that acts as a cleaning system to clear build up of debris between the blades, act as a guide for the timber, ensures equal depth incisions and prevents tear out of timber. The machines also have a unique variable sprung loaded damping system on each head to cope with the dimensional variation within each product as well as different timber density and knots.

For further information contact Graham on: +44 (0) 1746 714418 or click here