Economic profitability of particleboards production with a diversified raw material structure

To achieve sustainable development, coherence of three key elements is necessary: economic growth, social inclusion and environmental protection. They are interconnected and all are extremely important for achieving the well-being of individuals and entire societies. One of the key drivers of sustainable economic growth is the furniture industry, which is related to the maximum optimization of production cost while maintaining the high quality of the offered products. However, the expected material deficit may contribute to a significant weakening of growth dynamics. One of the possible solutions to this problem is harvesting timber from plantations of fast-growing trees that could supplement the increasing deficit of wood raw material. The research aimed to determine the cost-effectiveness of particleboard technology modification involving the change in the structure of raw material by introducing wood from fast-growing tree plantations. The research included an estimation of the unit cost of 1 m3 particleboard manufactured in the series production process. The analysis was carried out on the example of one of the leading particleboard suppliers for the Polish furniture industry and consisted in comparing the cost of production of particleboards based on wood from fast-growing tree plantations with the cost of particleboards, which are commonly available on the market. Three variants of the diversified raw material structure were taken into account: 100 % share (1), 50 % share (2) and 25 % share (3) of raw material from fast-growing tree plantations. The time range of the studies was adopted for the years 2014-2020. The research indicates that the introduction of wood from fast-growing tree plantations into the production of particleboards enables the production of material and energy cost savings at the level of 6 % (3rd variant) to even 17 % (1st variant). Variant 1 of material structure can lead to cost reduction at the level of EUR 11,6 million (in case of particleboards production capacity 570000 m3). &nbsp