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Today's opportunity in the sawmill business is grade optimisation. We all know how far dimensional scanning has development, but most of the gains have been made there. Likewise all of the developments in saw kerf have been tremendous, but now is the era for grade yield improvements and Acora Reneco has teamed with Microtec of Italy to bring this opportunity to our clients.
Microtec have more than 150 Electrical Engineers, focused on scanning and optimisation solutions for the wood products industry. This means the developments are massive.
Particularly for Radiata Pine, but also today with the economies of scale being developed in the hardwood business, being able to detect the grade of the wood early and thus allocate the correct processing is critical, available and mature.
As an example, Microtec have developed X-ray scanning to such an extent that they can detect the low grade core and then with their MaxiCut optimisation, control  the sawing machines to cut the appropriate dimension based on the grade. This may mean, for example, that core wood can be cut into pallet grade material end sections and sold green, and only material with high MOE values is kiln dried and dressed for structural. With selling prices between structural and case varying by 100's of dollars per cubic metre the opportunities are enormous.
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