At this year’s LIGNA, German machine and plant manufacturer DIEFFENBACHER is focused on supporting its customers and partners in overcoming the diverse challenges facing the global wood-based panels industry. Located at booth C41 in hall 26, the DIEFFENBACHER team will showcase solutions that tackle five of the sector’s most pressing issues: raw material supply, skilled labor shortages, cost pressures, energy supply, and environmental impact.
“Over the past two years since LIGNA 2023, we’ve listened intently to what our partners are saying about their challenges in this era of economic and political turbulence and disruption,” says Stefan Zipf, Head of the Wood Business Unit at DIEFFENBACHER. “At LIGNA 2025, we’ll present our solutions—both brand new and tried-and-tested, as well as those that have undergone significant further development—to meet these challenges,” he added further.
One of these challenges is raw material supply, especially fresh wood availability. At LIGNA, DIEFFENBACHER will introduce its pioneering Fiber2Fiber technology for recycling MDF, HDF, THDF and wood fiber insulation boards, including post-consumer material. The company will also showcase its long-established and proven complete waste wood recycling plants for particleboard production and its Waste2Product solutions for manufacturing products from non-wood production residues and waste materials.
The wood-based panels industry is also grappling with a shortage of skilled workers. To address this, DIEFFENBACHER leverages digitalisation and automation to simplify plant control and optimisation. Their AI-powered digital platform, EVORIS, helps alleviate the lack of experienced workers by providing intelligent support for plant staff in their daily operations. Additionally, DIEFFENBACHER’s automation solutions, such as the MAIER Knife Ring Maintenance Center, which automatically sharpens knife rings, exemplify the innovative tools available to enhance efficiency.
Another significant challenge closely linked to costs is energy supply. DIEFFENBACHER Energy from Bludenz, Austria, will present at LIGNA its bubbling fluidized-bed firing systems for generating energy from low-cost and sustainable refuse-derived fuels (RDF), i.e., fuels made from various types of waste. DIEFFENBACHER’s new Belt Dryer is an outstanding example of the company’s wide range of low-energy-consumption solutions. It operates at low infeed temperatures and can use low calorific energy, e.g., from cogeneration or other plant components.
“In addition to these solutions, we’ll also focus on our new Lifetime Service approach,” says Zipf. “Visitors to LIGNA will get a first glimpse of our new customer portal, an advanced solution to support their daily processes,” he explains. The DIEFFENBACHER Lifetime Service team will also feature its “One Face to the Customer” approach and expanded global service network with extended spare parts inventories and new offices and stronger teams in Southeast Asia and Latin America.” Zipf concluded.
Reducing energy consumption is crucial in addressing the environmental impact of the wood-based panels industry. As CO2 emission costs rise and consumers demand more sustainable products, minimizing a plant’s carbon footprint and showcasing these efforts has become more important than ever. With DIEFFENBACHER’s online carbon footprint calculator integrated into EVORIS, manufacturers can easily calculate the carbon footprint per cubic meter of their wood-based panels. Additionally, DIEFFENBACHER Energy’s sustainable energy generation technologies provide an effective solution to further enhance environmental performance.
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