More capacity for Koskisen's new sawmill in Finland – Higher speed with VK9000 series debarker

Koskisen Corporation, Järvelä, Finland

Koskisen’s new sawmill in Järvelä, Finland has been sawing logs and timber for more than 1,5 years from summer 2023. This is an investment of around EUR 50 million, which will result in Koskisen having more log diameters at its disposal than earlier. In addition, the sawmill has gained more productivity. Koskisen's annual sawing volume at the new sawmill will be around 400,000 cubic meters, which means that the sawmill will process around 800,000 cubic meters of fir logs per year.

Koskisen kuorimakone

- In the layout design of the new sawmill, special attention was paid to, among other things, the conveyors in front of the debarker and the log-to-log operation, says Lassi Santala, Project Director of the investment. This has had a significant impact, especially on the fact that there is now less splitting on the log ends and other quality problems, he continues.

- Koskisen's new sawmill needed more capacity than before and this meant a higher feed speed for the debarker. Valon Kone was able to meet the required technical criteria and a new generation VK9000 model was selected for the project, says Santala. The machine has a completely different power transmission compared to Koskisen's previous debarker, but this was not perceived as a risk - quite the opposite, he says. The tool pressure system (the so-called Air Seal) for the debarking rotors, on the other hand, was already familiar to Koskisen and this has been an advantage at the new sawmill.

- Our operating personnel had several years of experience with the Air Seal rotor and its operation on the previous VK debarker before the new VK9000 series machine, and this has greatly facilitated the use of the new debarker," says Santala.

In addition to the technical features of the debarker, the decision to purchase the machine from Valon Kone was influenced by VK's location near Koskisen and the after-sales services offered by the company. It is a short distance from VK Lohja to Järvelä sawmill and VK's after-sales service is very good," Santala adds. Valon Kone's service personnel can be on site quickly in case of problems.

The debarker supplied by Valon Kone to Koskisen was number 3 of the new VK9000 series. Though, Koskisen was confident that the new machine model had already been sufficiently tested and was fully ready for production use, says Santala. Trust in Valon Kone as a credible debarker supplier has been built up over many decades of cooperation and we could be sure that VK would not bring an unfinished product to the market," he adds. Valon Kone is consistent and gets the job done, Santala adds.

- Although there are always moments of problems in big projects, the project with Valon Kone was one of the easiest within the whole investment project, Santala says. I have known VK as a company and some of the people at VK for a couple of decades, so the working methods have become very familiar. This of course makes it easier to work together on a big project like this, he adds.

- Of course, there were some problems with the debarker during the project as well, but they did not affect the sawing volumes in any way. And any problems that have arisen under warranty have always been dealt with Valon Kone, he says.

- The VK machine does its job well, concludes Santala. His image of Valon Kone as a credible and reliable machine developer has remained the same throughout all these years. Even though the people in the organization change, he concludes the interview.

- It was a pleasure to work with Koskisen on this project, which went very smoothly from the sales phase to the start-up, training and fine-tuning of the machine. We believe that the new debarker at Koskisen sawmill will serve as an excellent reference for us. And our continued collaboration with Koskisen on various product development projects will improve the machine even further. An extra bonus in this project was that I was able to resell Koskisen's old debarker. A new home for it was found in Tervola in Southern Lapland," comments Valon Kone’s Sales Director Teemu Tynkkynen.

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