Located in the Bakar Arang Industrial Estate in the Malaysian State of Kedah is Syarikat Malaysia Wood Industries (MWI), under the company’s logo : Unilin®. With a well-run, high-tech, clean and efficient plant, and a passion for innovation, it is a real ambassador for Malaysian wood-based industrial production. It manufactures engineered wood flooring and trades under the ‘Quick Step®’, ‘Pergo’ and ‘Universal®’ brands.  Unilin offers a phenomenal choice of products for its global marketplace. Timber Malaysia had a chat with its Senior GM, Lee Soo Lee, to find out more about the secret of its solid success.

TM: MWI has a workforce of about 1,100, eighty per cent of whom are Malaysians, and all this is happening when the rest of the industry has been lamenting about minimum wage. How did the company achieve this?

LSL: The original owner of MWI had the workforce drawn mainly from locally born Malaysians. He wanted to take the company to a global level, but with sufficient financial and marketing support. The real success of MWI or Unilin Malaysia is its high tech production and passion with innovation. We have a strong degree of commitment to our stakeholders, which includes the workers. With the installation of modern and state-of-the-art machinery and equipment, the group which has placed top priority on Health, Safety and Environment features, has been able to achieve the highest hygiene level, unlike the general notion of unclean and unsafe conditions in typical wood-based production facilities. Our human resource is one of our biggest assets, and this philosophy is reflected in our HR and operational management to help deliver the productivity that we require. Our employees are mainly directly employed members of the National Timber Trade Union, with some additional contractor workers, all comprising equally 50% men and 50% women.

TM: Please tell us a bit more on how MWI fits into the whole corporate jigsaw of a global conglomerate.

LSL: Since 2007, MWI has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Belgium-based Unilin Company with global employees of over 5,000 and 21 production units. Unilin invested RM40 million over five years in Malaysia to build a new integrated manufacturing plant as well as equip the production capacity at MWI with advanced machinery to expand its present manufacturing facilities. Today, the Unilin division produces laminates, engineered wood and vinyl floors as well as wood-based panels (particle board, MDF), decorative panels, roofing elements and insulation panels. Recently, Unilin increased her engineered flooring capacity by an additional 1 million sq m with the acquisition of Magnum, an engineered flooring producer from Czechoslovakia. Unilin is part of the American Mohawk Group, the largest flooring producer of carpet, ceramic tiles, laminates, wood, stone, vinyl and rugs in the world with 32,500 employees, US$7.6 billion sales and is quoted on the New York Stock Exchange. Mohawk’s international presence includes operations in China, Europe, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil and Russia. The Malaysian operation produces the group’s engineered wood flooring  where the floorings are produced based on a patented drop down click installation system for export worldwide. MWI is the first Unilin’s plant to produce the patented Multifit drop down click system for engineered wood flooring.

Facts that Figure: MWI/Unilin

Customer Base: Europe (main), Australia, Brazil, Japan, Russia, USA
Installed Capacity: 2.4 million m² per year
Production: 2.05 million m² per year in three co-located plants
Raw material stock: About 7,500 – 7,700 m³ of solid wood
Production operations: Two-shift basis
Surface species: Ash, Blackbutt, Jarrah, Jatoba, Kempas, Iroko, Merbau, Oak, Spotted Gum Tasmanian Oak and Walnut.
Core species: Rubberwood, Pine, Spruce
Finishing: Stained silk, satin and matt, oiled, fumed, brushed or deep brushed, saw-cut, crafted and ‘time-worn’

TM: Could you provide a quick history of MWI, please?

LSL: The company traces itself back to a 1969 sawmill supplied by its own forest concessions for production of sawn timber. In 1988 the world-renowned furniture innovator Larry Mo, of Hong Kong Teakwoods fame, pioneered products using discarded Rubberwood in his quest to find a replacement for diminishing Ramin timber supplies. He worked on overcoming the technical problems of using Rubberwood for furniture parts, including finger jointing, laminating and moulding Rubberwood. He then developed the local Rubberwood as core material for engineered flooring at MWI. The rest is history. In fact MWI became the first engineered flooring plant in Asia, also producing mosaic parquet to recover small pieces.

TM: How does MWI remain competitive, particularly with rising costs of timber raw materials?

LSL: We focus on fewer surface species than other Asian producers. We offer Malaysian Kempas and Merbau, plus imported American and European Oak, European Ash, American Walnut, African Iroko, Jatoba from South America and a range of Australian species for the Australian and New Zealand markets.  These include Tasmanian Oak, Blackbutt, Spotted Gum and Jarrah. All are chosen for their resistance to impact and wear. Oak is the major species accounting for as much of 53% of shipments from MWI.  Oak makes up 66% of all hardwood flooring in the European market, and the figure is as high as 75% for the U.S. market. Combinations of species are also available.

Other hardwoods are available by request, but what our range lacks in species choice, we more than make up by offering a whole gamut of grades and structures, surface treatments, stains, lacquers and finishes; lengths, widths and thickness, patterns and bevelling as well as specialized choices of flooring structures. The Marina collection, for example, consists of one strip floors with a special groove of 5mm wide decorative rubber strip creating a nautical deck appeal. We also offer a  myriad of finishes including stained silk, satin and matt, oiled, fumed, brushed or deep brushed, saw-cut, crafted,and a new ‘timeworn’ option of a floor that appears to have aged gracefully over the years. Such choices take engineered flooring designs to a whole new level.

TM: Many producers are able to manufacture solid three-ply engineered flooring these days. What sets you apart from the rest?

LSL: Our main products, three-layer flooring or ‘3-ply parquet’ normally come with rubberwood cores although some markets prefer softwood Pine and Spruce cores which are produced from plantation forest imported from Scandinavia. What sets us apart is our range which includes three-strip, two- and single-strip, as well as Pattern planks in various combinations of 12.5mm or 14mm (thickness) and standard lengths of up to 2.2m in some products. Four grades, from the top, are ‘Finesse’, ‘Nature’, ‘Marquant-Accent’ and ‘Character’.  When Unilin took over MWI it introduced both ‘Uniclic’ and the dropdown click ‘Multifit’ in most of its standard long planks, on whichever core. Later the ‘Cadenza’ range was developed, which has smaller planks (1,150 x 145mm) on HDF core with ‘Uniclic Multifit’ click for the do-it-yourself (DIY) market. With six planks per pack, which is exactly one square metre, it is very easy to calculate for a do-it-yourselfer. The pack is also smaller, making it easy to handle by both the shop and the end-consumer.
A central pillar of the company’s approach is to simplify installation issues from the outset, and this is evident in the three levels of installation systems offered with ‘Uniclic Multifit’ at the top of its ‘Quick Step®’ range. Add to this sound damping, floor levelling solutions and products for underfloor heating, and the comprehensive range of modern engineered flooring products becomes evident.

TM: What other aspects of your operations contribute to MWI’s success?

LSL: MWI has a plant using some state of the art wood working machinery including 12 Wintersteiger saws and equipment from the likes of Burkle, Cefla, Costa, Homag, Tagliabue and Weinig. However, what I would consider our edge is our discipline, bordering on obsession, towards controlling the moisture content throughout the production process. Most of the raw materials, once kiln dried, or imported, at the correct MC are wrapped and stored in humidity-controlled atmosphere at 7-8 % MC and 30ºC temperature. These rooms have been set aside for storing both solid wood and veneer. Moisture is the most likely cause of any potential problems leading to claims, which are almost eliminated by Unilin’s production systems. And the confidence in Unilin products can be assessed by the warranties offered in its catalogues, some of which extend for a “lifetime”.

We also have a separately located colour control facilities. Control samples are logged and stored in a dark and temperature controlled store and are matched against each production run from colour samples which are also stored. The company also offers a sampling service of well-presented samples rather than relying on distributors, who offer their customers cut-up pieces from stock which may not be fully representative of the grade produced.

To stay ahead of the game, we have to also be responsive to changes taking place in the market. MWI is now supplying real hardwood engineered flooring for the first time to group member Pergo, a company previously known for its non-wood flooring. MWI also supplies own-brand flooring to other major global wood flooring distributors.

“Moisture is the most likely cause of any potential problems leading to claims” – Lee

TM: How has MWI handled market demands for products that adhere to environmental standards and are made of certified and/or legal timbers?

LSL: MWI is committed to a range of environmental policies and is certified to FSC and PEFC with careful selection of its sources of raw materials from sustainable and legal forest resources. We advocate the certification of forests and are committed to purchasing all our timber from legal sources.  Our HDF core is PEFC-certified and the Rubberwood is sourced solely from plantations. There is still some way to go in tracking all material at all stages of production, but we are confident that all wood materials are legal and sustainable. The local natural forest species such as Merbau and Kempas, and locally produced veneers for core material, are PEFC-certified through endorsement of the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS).

Two years ago, we converted to production of water-based lacquer stains and finishes supplied by leading international manufacturers, except where wax, oils or other specialised finishes are required. We use both E1 and F4 star (non-formaldehyde) adhesive, depending on customer requirements. These standards fulfil the highest international environmental standards approved by accredited laboratories. The plant is also equipped with chippers and boilers to process all wood waste, producing sufficient energy to power all the kilns and presses without drawing on the national grid.