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One year after a transformative €44.4M investment, the upgrade of MEDITE SMARTPLY’s OSB factory in County Waterford is on schedule—despite the anticipated setbacks of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The investment was procured to upgrade the drying facility, which had been in continuous operation since 1996, and is now on its way to delivering a world class drying, energy and screen system that will enhance resource efficiency and asset reliability. It will also greatly increase factory capacity.
The first announcement of the investment came at a critical time for MEDITE SMARTPLY, part of Coillte, Ireland’s largest commercial forestry and land solutions company, as it looked to scale up production levels to meet the continual strong demand for its products. This demand has not diminished throughout 2020 and the first half of 2021, leading progress on factory improvements to be driven at full speed.
The improved output, as a result of the project, will increase product availability even further, enabling the company to support existing customer positions and to develop new market sectors and opportunities as part of the company’s strategy and growth plan.
“We are delighted that our work on this has progressed so well so far. It is a credit to our invaluable team that everyone has pulled together so efficiently amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, to ensure we maintained our schedule.
“Every day we get closer to delivering our best in class timber panel products to even more customers, while providing a welcome economic boost to the Waterford region too,” comments Chris King, Managing Director at MEDITE SMARTPLY.
“We produce a valued and unique product sustainably and to the highest quality, and we’re extremely excited to be able to increase its availability to our international customer base.”
This was the second significant investment to be made in SMARTPLY in the last five years, with an injection of €59M into the company taking place in 2016. Initial forecasting showed project completion in Q2 of 2022 for which the outlook remains positive.
