15 Acceptances in 2021

Last year, Siempelkamp completed 15 plants worldwide, the majority of the projects for customers in the wood-based products industry. The regional focus was on the acceptance in North America with five projects and in China with three completed projects. Two further plants were accepted in Turkey, and one each in Thailand, Vietnam, India, Russia and Brazil.

The 2021 acceptance tests clearly reflect Siempelkamp’s positioning in the wood-based materials industry – 14 plants benefit this market, one more the composites industry. In the Asian market, the focus was on plants for MDF production, while the other projects were realised for particleboard or OSB production. In North America and Brazil, one short-cycle press line each was accepted, a multi-daylight line for OSB production also in North America.

“The ongoing pandemic situation with the accompanying travel restrictions and quarantine conditions was ambitious. In addition, the workload of the projects shifted from 2020 to 2021 due to the corona-related interruptions at the customer construction sites; the same applies to the seven start-ups that we carried out in 2021,” says Egbert Schulte, who as head of project management, field assembly and logistics at Siempelkamp had to consider many special framework conditions with his team. It was also important that personal coordination with plant operators on site could take place less intensively than usual due to the special situation in 2021. Nine of the accepted plants are produced by Siempelkamp regular customers, six by new customers, so that the respective dialogue took place under different conditions and requirements.

“All of these successful acceptances are based on our very good preparation phases and the readiness of our commissioning specialists to work even under permanently changing travel and quarantine conditions. Where we were nevertheless limited, projects could be realised by using the remote service for further plant components. In the end, every single acceptance could only be carried out so successfully because the contact with all customers was as intensive as it was constructive. We would like to express our sincere thanks to everyone involved,” says Jürgen Philipps, spokesman for the management of Siempelkamp Maschinen- und Anlagenbau GmbH.