One year on from a €44.4illion investment, the upgrade of MEDITE SMARTPLY’s OSB factory in County Waterford is on schedule, despite the setbacks of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Initial forecasts by the company suggests the project will be completed in Q2 of 2022.

The investment has been made to upgrade the drying factory, which had been in continuous operation since 1996, to deliver enhance resource efficiency and asset reliability and increase factory capacity.

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The first announcement of the investment came at a critical time for MEDITE SMARTPLY, part of Ireland’s commercial forestry and land solutions company Coillte, as it looked to scale up production levels to meet the continual strong demand for its products.

According to the company, the demand has not diminished, leading progress on factory improvements “to be driven at full speed.”

The increased output will increase product availability, enabling the company to support existing customer positions and to develop new market sectors, as part of the company’s strategy and growth plan.

Managing Director at MEDITE SMARTPLY Chris King commented: “We are delighted that our work on this has progressed so well so far.

“It is a credit to our invaluable team that everyone has pulled together so efficiently amidst the uncertainty of the pandemic, to ensure we maintained our schedule.

“Every day we get closer to delivering our best-in-class timber panel products to even more customers, while providing a welcome economic boost to the Waterford region too.

“We produce a valued and unique product sustainably and to the highest quality, and we’re extremely excited to be able to increase its availability to our international customer base.”

This is second significant investment to be made in SMARTPLY in the last five years, following an injection of €59million into the company in 2016.