Fast roofing for Metsä Wood’s Pärnu mill with wooden elements
Metsä Wood’s new birch plywood mill was inaugurated in Pärnu, Estonia in October 2018. With a tight construction schedule, the use of prefabricated elements was the best option. The advantages of using Kerto® LVL (laminated veneer lumber) beams and wooden roof elements combined with other materials were clearly visible in the speed and cost of the construction.
The construction of the Pärnu mill began in April 2017 and was completed one year later. The building comprises a production hall with social facilities and an office. The total area of the building is 29,300 m2, which is roughly the same size as four football pitches.
The project’s lead design office was the Finnish company Sweco. Project manager Aare Uusalu says this was the first time for him to work with wood in such an extensive way. “We designed the building using wood because of the green thinking of Metsä Wood. Kerto LVL was also a cost-effective material, as the lightness of the elements made assembling fast”, he says, capturing the essence of wood element construction – fast, light and green.
Fast and easy installation
The load-bearing structure combines glulam, steel beams and wooden roof elements. Kerto LVL S-beams were used for the load-bearing structures of the wood elements. The 2.5 metre wide, 18 metre long and 400 millimetre thick roof elements were made by the Estonian company Timbeco Woodhouse.
Marek Sööt, the Project Manager at the main contractor Nordecon, says that using prefabricated elements sped up the building process. According to him, using timber elements with concrete structures for the roofing of large buildings significantly improves the pace of the project as well as reducing the budget: “The main benefit was that installation is essentially twice as fast compared to common solutions, like steel or concrete beams and steel profiles.”
According to Sööt, it was a natural choice to use wood materials for a mill that processes wood, and aesthetic and green values also play a part in this. In the mill’s offices, timber is used both in the facade and the exposed parts of the interiors: “Of course, there is also the aesthetic point of view. It is certainly nicer than any standard solution”, he concludes.
The new birch plywood mill has a production capacity of 50,000 cubic metres. Full capacity will be reached by the end of 2019.
Read more about the construction project of the Pärnu mill.
Images: https://databank.metsagroup.com/l/vVp6DmR_SCqG
For more information, please contact:
Viivi Kylämä, Marketing Manager, Metsä Wood, mobile: +358 40 820 9850, viivi.kylama@metsagroup.com
Kirk Nichols, VP Sales, Americas, Metsä Wood USA
mobile: (404) 861-1098, kirk.nichols@metsagroup.com
For press information in UK, please contact:
Matt Trace, Director, Defero Communications
tel. 07828663988, matt@deferouk.co.uk
Metsä Wood provides competitive and environmentally friendly wood products for construction, industrial customers and distributor partners. We manufacture products from northern wood, a sustainable raw material of premium quality. Our sales in 2017 were EUR 0.5 billion, and we employ about 1,400 people. Metsä Wood is part of Metsä Group.
