Swedish Valutec, the world leader in continuous wood drying, introduces ”Closed Loop Drying” a patent-pending solution that can achieve energy savings up to 50%.

“Lumber drying is one of the most energy-intensive processes at the sawmills. Given the global rise in energy costs, this significantly enhances the economic attractiveness of the system”, says patent inventor Robert Larsson, Business Developer at Valutec.

To increase quality yield and gain greater flexibility in production, Holmen, one of Scandinavia's leading sawmill groups, has chosen to rebuild its drying fleet at its sawmill in Bygdsiljum, Sweden. An older continuous kiln is being "retired" and replaced with four state-of-the-art batch kilns from Swedish Valutec.

At Ligna we will tell you about the new generation of continuous kilns and how the new features in our control system Valmatics 4.0 improve both drying and financial results for sawmills around the world.

Simply put, it is about next-level optimization that makes the most of every board, but also about sustainability from design to high-quality processes.

“As a leading company in wood drying kilns, our starting point is to use the best possible technology in our products and save energy. That is why we have chosen ABB's IE5 energy-efficiency class SynRM motors as the standard solution for our kilns,” states Mikko Pitkänen, Managing Director of Valutec Oy, Finland.