Oy Haka-Wood Ab

Viitasaari, Finland

Haka-Wood, in Viitasaari Central Finland, is one of the few sawmills in Finland focusing solely on birch. High-quality birch in the area has enabled a continuous expansion of the production in the sawmill, which was started already in the 1960’s. In the beginning Haka-Wood was a one man’s circular saw and the company growth has been strong since then. Now Haka-Wood employs about 40 people and the main ownership belongs to its operative management.

Birch logs Haka-Wood

Haka-Wood has an ongoing investment program, which includes a new dry sorting plant and a debarking house with a debarker, among other things. The managing director, Tuomo Saarisilta, explains that the previous debarker in the sawmill was already at the end of its life cycle and its unreliable operation caused extra standstills. “The debarker was kind of a bottleneck in the sawmill’s production chain”, he says.

In addition to North Europe, Haka-Wood’s main markets are in Great Britain, in the Far East, and Romania with the customers mostly being from the furniture industry. Along with customers quality requirements, the debarker and debarking quality must be trusted in all circumstances. “The debarking result of the previous machine was insufficient particularly with frozen birch”, Saarisilta mentions. Haka-Wood debarks each year a bit over 60,000 m3 of birch logs. The maximum diameter of the logs is 60 cm and the minimum length 2,8 m.

The solution to Haka-Wood’s problem was a debarker model VK26SMX from Valon Kone. It is a strong debarker for the needs of a small and middle-sized sawmill. “The new VK debarker has enough capacity for debarking of birch logs and you achieve a good debarking result with it”, explains Saarisilta. “The machine’s dimensions also fit to the older debarker’s foundation and needed only small modifications. In addition, of course the price and the delivery time were suitable for us”, he adds.

“Our co-operation with Valon Kone has worked extremely well. Everything went as planned and the new debarker started to operate during the same shift that was scheduled in advance. Professional and active sales had a big impact, and the dealing stage and the preliminary reviews went perfectly. In addition, the installation supervision and the training in the use was professional,” says the managing director.

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