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07.02.2023

Waste wood recycling at Pfeifer in Uelzen takes shape

The construction work for the new waste wood recycling plant is well advanced on the expanded Pfeifer factory premises. The recycling of wood waste for pallet block production is to start this year. By 2024, Pfeifer is investing 50 million euros in the modernization and safeguarding of the site.

Every year, more than 8 million tons of waste wood are produced in Germany alone, which are recycled materially or energetically. The expansion of the material use is an important step to relieve the climate and to deal gently with the future material wood. In the waste wood processing plant in Uelzen, Pfeifer intends to process around 70,000 tons of waste wood of pollutant classes A1 and A2 annually in the future. These include products that are natural or finished with harmless adhesives or coatings, such as discarded pallets made of solid wood or transport boxes made of wood-based materials.

Civil engineering works for the waste wood recycling plant will start soon, which will visibly change the appearance of the plant.

"Our project ensures that the valuable resource wood remains in the recycling cycle for a longer time. We are making a contribution to the environment and developing waste wood as a secondary raw material for our pallet block production,“ reports Gernot Hormess, Managing Director of Pfeifer Holz Uelzen. The largest log factory of the Pfeifer Group is the first to accept the challenge of converting log production from pure fresh wood to a fresh / waste wood mix.

Pfeifer wants to process around 70,000 tons of waste wood of pollutant classes A1 and A2 every year.

The waste wood recycling plant is scheduled to go into operation in 2023.

Significant growth on the factory premises

Due to the construction work for the waste wood recycling plant, the appearance of the Pfeifer site will change visibly in the coming months. By October, a 350-meter-long tubular belt conveyor is to be built, which will run over all buildings on the production site at a height of about 20 meters and is attached to huge pylons by means of ropes. A storage silo and cleaning tower, each almost 30 meters high, will also be built. The conveyor is used to transport the recycled wood chips from the storage silo to the belt dryers. The drying of the waste wood chips themselves requires only half as much energy as the drying of fresh chips, which are produced as a saw by-product directly at the site. Both types of chips are later mixed on a belt dryer and processed into pressboard pallet blocks for the pallet industry.

The Pfeifer Group is investing 50 million euros in the Uelzen site over the next few years.

Optimizations for the benefit of employees

Pfeifer currently employs 200 people in Uelzen in the areas of production, maintenance and administration. After an investment programme of EUR 10 million from 2019 to 2021, Pfeifer is investing a further EUR 50 million in the long-term safeguarding of the site from 2022 to 2024. In addition to the construction of the waste wood recycling plant, the most important measures include the renovation of the sawmill including the log yard and the increase of the cutting capacity from 500,000 to around 800,000 fixed meters. In the course of the waste wood project, a new hall heating system for the log factory is also being built. The first part of the modern heating system has already been completed, the second part will follow in March. "Improving the indoor air in the log production hall is one of our priority goals. With the new hall heating, we are taking a big step towards this overall project closer," Hormess said. The heat for the new heating is supplied by the company's own biomass cogeneration plant.

Gernot Hormess

Managing Director Uelzen

”Our project ensures that the valuable resource wood remains in the recycling cycle for a longer time. We are making a contribution to the environment and developing waste wood as a secondary raw material for our pallet block production“

About the Pfeifer Group

The Pfeifer Group is one of the most traditional and competitive companies in the European wood industry with 2,600 employees at 13 locations in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Finland. The company headquarters of the family-run group is located in Imst (Tyrol/Austria). Around 5.4 million solid metres of wood are cut annually in the Group's fully integrated sawmills and processed along the entire value chain into sawn timber and planed goods, concrete formwork panels, formwork girders, cross laminated timber (CLT), glulam, solid wood panels as well as pallet blocks, briquettes, pellets and bio power. Pfeifer exports to 90 countries worldwide, but around 90% of its turnover is generated in its core European markets.