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InSight

Norbord has launched Caberfix – its new flooring system – to give merchants and

dealers an opportunity for product linked sales that add value and margin on Norbord’s best-selling Caberdek flooring brand.

The Caberfix system has been specifically designed to be used with Caberdek to help housebuilders speed up the installation of flooring and deliver a high quality “creak-free” floor at a competitive price.

And to make it easier for merchants and dealers to promote the BBA-approved system, Norbord has developed the CaberfixPro kit: all the materials required to install 50m² of flooring, with two kits sufficient for every pack of Caberdek floor boards.

The Caberfix system includes two types of adhesive – Caberfix T&G and Caberfix Joint&Joist – and a 100% waterproof polyethylene-coated cloth tape.

Caberfix T&G is a strong PVA D3 glue for joining boards along the tongue-and-groove joints, while Caberfix Joint&Joist is a fast-setting polyurethane elastomeric adhesive which creates a structural bond between the floorboards and the supporting joist.

Joint&Joist has unique shock and noise absorbing properties and is used instead of mechanical fixings to produce a squeak-free floor. Instead of the 17 fixings per board normally required for traditional floors, the new Caberfix system needs only three nails per board to support the joint while the adhesive cures.

Mike Buick, Norbord’s National Brand Manager, said: “We have developed the Caberfix system specifically in response to feedback from our customers on the range of fixing products they use for installing floors.

“While traditional materials and methods are still available, Caberfix represents a major step forward in both quality and value – and a great opportunity for merchants and dealers to increase their margin on the back of Caberdek sales.”

Caberfix solution for housebuilders

Welcometo this issue

Norbord estimates that the Caberfix new flooring system will save the average builder up to 30 minutes per 50m² of floor.

New system will provide a quick and high quality finish to flooring at a competitive price

Autumn/Winter 2010In this issue:

Technical helpline | Page 02Launch of No Squeak adhesive | Page 03Biomass threat to industry | Page 04

We may be in economically challenging times, but this has not stopped us from investing in our products, plant, people and customers. In this newsletter you will see what we mean.

We’ve launched several new value added flooring accessory products which will add margin for merchants as well as help drive sales of Caberfloor and Caberdek, and we’re also involved in activities to boost sales of MDF products.

Our capital investment programmes continue to develop products, control costs, enhance capacity and grow market share. And we continue to make progress towards building a world-class safety culture.

A huge issue for us and others is the government subsidy for biomass energy producers. After reading the article on page four, I hope you will join us in supporting the MakeWoodWork campaign.

I hope you find the recent developments at Norbord interesting, and please get in touch with us if you have any questions about how these plans will benefit your business.

Dave McElroy, Deputy Managing Director Commercial

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InSight Autumn/Winter 2010

A ligning with customers’ objectives is a key business strategy for Norbord. The

£1 million packing line investment at South Molton is a demonstration of this belief in action.

The consumer’s experience of a brand can be positively enhanced by the product’s pack appearance which adds value to that purchase.

This is a fact recognised by Norbord , and i t s £1 mi l l ion investment has an additional benefit of enhancing employee safety and working conditions. Employee safety

is always of paramount concern for Norbord, which always takes the opportunity to enhance the situation when changes are made to equipment or plant.

Norbord’s Added Value Operations Manager Tony Tanton said: “The new 50 metre packing line has transformed our production line, and greatly improved the overall presentation of our packed units.

“The new look will inspire confidence in consumers who are purchasing a Norbord-manufactured kitchen.”

L istening to customers is vital for a company to be successful. So, when our customers told us that

they needed more technical support for end-users of Norbord products, particularly for our new flooring fixing products, we set up three dedicated helplines to meet this demand.

MDF Tel: 01786 819 221Particleboard Tel: 01786 819 292Sterling OSB Tel: 01786 819 334

Themia Hastie, Norbord’s General Manager – ICT & Supply Chain, said the investment has paid dividends: “These dedicated helplines have enhanced

how our customers and end-users of our products obtain information and get a quick and easy answer to all their enquiries, particularly regarding product in use.”

In addition to this service, a wealth of information is also available from our website: visit www.norbord.com

Norbord’s journey towards its ambition to build a world-class safety culture

continues apace. In fact, the company’s approach to safety management goes well beyond safety and extends to all other areas, including product quality and customer service.

For the past few years Norbord has used safety as a platform to create a fundamental cultural shift in the company – where the ideas for improvement come from its employees rather than its management.

“We’ve turned the traditional organisational structure on its head,” explained Steve Roebuck, Norbord’s Director of Environment, Health and Safety. “The impetus for change and improvement comes from our employees and this is having a really positive effect on the way Norbord operates.”

While Norbord’s safety

performance was already considered good, Steve said that wasn’t enough: so it launched its own Norbord Safety Star accreditation in 2007.

Steve explained: “We’ve taken the best of the OSHA North American safety employee participation programmes and added some of our own world class safety protocols to make this a very high hurdle to reach.

“It’s been a fascinating journey that’s engaged our employees and they are really driving it now. In the UK we’ve made good progress and expect to get accreditation for all our mills in 2011.

“It’s making a real difference to Norbord, and to its customers as well. I would defy anyone to show me a company that has a world-class safety culture that isn’t also a highly efficient company producing high-quality products or services,” added Steve.

Norbord starsin safety culture

New cabinet packing line enhances quality

mycabinetguide.co.uk is a new website developed by Norbord for B&Q’s customers to show how easy it is to assemble the Cooke & Lewis and IT range of kitchen cabinets – all produced at Norbord’s South Molton factory in Devon.

For many, the idea of assembling kitchen cabinets is a daunting prospect, but the instructional videos on the website should convince people how quick and easy it really can be.

Mark Popplewell, Norbord’s General Sales Manager – Added Value, explained: “The website is also useful to help train B&Q staff in the assembly and quality aspects of the two kitchen ranges and is a great way for us to contribute to our customers’ success.”

The website resource complements Norbord’s existing kitchen telephone helpline and customer service team which is also available to assist B&Q customers with their expert and helpful knowledge.

■ To see for yourself, visit www.mycabinetguide.co.uk

Mycabinetguide.co.uk shows how easy it is

» Technical helpline

03 www.norbord.com

InSightAutumn/Winter 2010

Norbord plans to expand MDF sales through a range of business initiatives with new and existing customers and supply chain partners.

Dave McElroy, Norbord’s Deputy Managing Director Commercial, explained: “We are exploring opportunities on a number of fronts. We’ve undertaken a series of well-structured engagements with our supply chain partners which are directly aimed at growing mutually profitable business together.

“We also are also re-engaging with some UK MDF end-use sectors which have dropped off in recent years. We are also developing markets in new sectors, and expanding our sales onto Continental Europe.

“And we will be making further investments in energy efficiency in order to help offset rapidly rising wood costs – a consequence of strong competition from the energy sector.” (See article on page 4).

In the second ha l f of 2008, Norbord, like others in the industry, was forced to make adjustments to both

its production levels and its product mix in order to respond to the economic realities of the downturn. Notwithstanding that large economic uncertainties still remain, Norbord is now moving well on with the business of re-engineering its operations to respond to the changed – and changing – business environment.

Dave added: “We learned a lot during the downturn. We have come out of that process leaner and stronger and are now focused on growing back our sales volumes in those products and sectors which make economic sense for both our customers, and ourselves.”

Poorly installed flooring can be a thing of the past thanks to Norbord’s new adhesive

No Squeak is a powerful polyurethane adhesive launched by Norbord that does exactly what it says – stops floors from

squeaking – and gives merchants and dealers a great way to increase margins on sales of Norbord’s Caberfloor boards.

The adhesive has been specifically designed to be used with Norbord’s Caberfloor boards to solve one of the housebuilding industry’s

most common causes of ‘call-back’ complaint – squeaky floors.

The adhesive fixes floor panels to timber joists securely using 80% fewer nails and screws than normally required.

But it’s not just for new floors – it can also be used to help re-lay existing floors to produce a high quality and squeak-free finish.

Norbord National Brand Manager Mike Buick

said: “It’s a great bolt-on product which will give our merchants an easily sellable, margin enhancing added sale which naturally complements our brand-leading Caberfloor P5 product.”

No Squeak is available in 310ml cartridges with one cartridge enough to secure five sheets of Caberfloor board.

■ For more info, visit www.no-squeak.co.uk

Norbord develop new markets for MDF

Fixing the problem of squeaky floors

£25m investment continues at CowieNorbord is set to grow its

market share in flooring and other construction-

related products further following the completion of the final phase of its £25 million particleboard investment programme at its Cowie mill in Stirlingshire.

The final investment phase will include the replacement of a forming station and pre-press components that will lead to increased capacity and efficiency of the particleboard operations at the mill.

Karl Morris, Managing Director of Norbord Europe, said: “The programme has already involved the installation of a state-of-the-art continuous press which has allowed us to grow our market share in particleboard applications.

“This final stage of works will provide us with added operating flexibility, a broader product mix, further quality improvements, capacity growth of over 10 per cent and a reduction in total manufacturing costs.”

Karl Morris, Managing Director of Norbord Europe

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InSight Autumn/Winter 2010

As widely expected, the UK economy’s road back to health is proving a rather

bumpy and uncertain one. On the positive side of things, GDP growth has come in substantially higher than expected in both Q2 and Q3, with the construction sector playing a significant part in this performance. This suggests that the economy may be more resilient than some had feared.

On the other hand, consumer confidence and spending have been slowing recently, no doubt partly influenced by the way that the headlines have been dominated by the cuts announced in the Government’s recent Comprehensive Spending Review. The Government is banking on private sector growth to

offset these cutbacks, but it remains to be seen how this will roll out.

In the housing market, house prices and mortgage lending have been falling back in recent months, but Norbord does not expect any price crash, since demand remains high and the low level of mortgage defaults means that supply coming onto the market remains limited.

The new build sector is also going through a difficult patch after a stronger than expected first half to the year (up 60% on 2009). Cuts to the social housing budget will not help either, but any squeeze in supply may encourage the Government to look at loosening the regulatory burden on building in order to stimulate more growth.

Looking to 2011, continued housebu i ld ing recove r y i s anticipated, but most commentators expect it is likely to be long and slow. A brighter note is that the recovery in northern Europe, and particularly Germany, appears to have gained some traction, and combined with the low value of the British pound, this will give UK exports a boost.

Contact us

NorbordStation Road, Cowie, Stirlingshire FK7 7BQT: 01786 812921Email: info@norbord.netwww.norbord.comwww.betterbyfar.orgwww.mycabinetguide.co.ukwww.conti.co.ukwww.no-squeak.co.uk

The UK’s wood-based industries and the environment look to be the ultimate losers in the Government’s misguided attempts to promote biomass as a fuel for energy generation.

That’s the opinion of Norbord and others in the Wood Panel Industries Federation. They have launched the MakeWoodWork campaign to lobby the Government to modify its Renewables Obligation (RO) subsidy to electricity generators that is currently distorting the UK market for wood.

Steve Roebuck, Norbord’s Director of Environment, Health and Safety, explained their concern: “The plain fact is there is not enough wood from UK forests to supply existing wood industries and the new and planned large-scale wood-fired power generators.

“Average wood prices have already increased by more than 30% over the past two years. Excessive demand from new biomass plants will lead to further sharp increases – which the heavily subsidised new energy plants will be able to afford, however these will have to be passed on to buyers of wood products. This in turn could threaten the entire wood panel industry, and the 8,700 jobs associated with it.”

According to consultants Carbon River, if the panel manufacturing industry is displaced by the emerging biomass sector – as trends suggest it might – there would be an increase in net CO

2 emissions equivalent to 1.5 tonnes of CO

2

per tonne of wood processed. That equates to a total increase of six million tonnes – or 1%

of the UK’s total net CO2 emissions each year.

Steve added: “We are not anti-biomass. Indeed, Norbord is already the UK’s largest generator of renewable heat energy, using our own process residues to generate the heat needed to manufacture our products.”

Such is Norbord’s concern, it shut its three UK and one European mill for a short time on Friday 29 October in support of the symbolic Day of Action across Europe called for by the European Panel Federation to highlight the impact of EU biomass subsidies which are endangering the industry.

■ To find out more, please visit www.makewoodwork.co.uk

Biomass subsidy threatens UK wood industries

How will the economic “recovery” unfold?