Strong in abrasives Ekamant

STRONG IN ABRASIVES

Ekamant AB, based in the town of Markaryd in Sweden, produces coated abrasives for furniture manufacturers and other industrial purposes. Industry Europe looks at the latest from the company.

Ekamant offers a wide range of high-quality coated abrasive products to customers throughout the world. Its products can be found in large manufacturing plants to small woodworking shops from China to the USA. In addition to reinforcing its leading position in the wood industry, its aim is to achieve a strong presence within the global metal, automotive and composites industry.

Ekamant’s abrasives cannot be bought in a DIY store. The many different kinds of abrasives sandpaper the company produces are intended to satisfy the specific requirements of wood industries, from making grand pianos to building the cabins of boats or kitchen cabinets.

Ekamant was founded in 1928 and employs around 430 people. Three years ago, it began to sell abrasive products for metals, car bodywork and for composite materials such as fibreglass. However, abrasives for wood still account for around 90 per cent of the company’s turnover. Ekamant’s origins are in wood, and the wood industry is still the biggest focus.

Ekamant produces abrasives that are designed for use in the wood industry in the form of wide and narrow belts or discs. At its main factory in Småland, the company makes the abrasives in jumbo reels, before sending the reels on to conversion plants placed in the different local markets.

Global supplier

Exporting belts directly from its factory in Småland would be expensive, so Ekamant has subsidiaries in various European countries to do the job of converting the reels. Småland is also where the retail giant, IKEA, first began, and Ekamant has been supplying IKEA’s furniture subsidiary, Swedwood, for a number of years. It also sells to small-scale businesses, such as producers of hand-made cabinets.

Globally, Ekamant has subsidiaries in Indonesia, China (Beijing as well as Schenzen), Poland, Estonia and South Africa. Outside these areas it has a distribution network in over 50 countries, many of which it has been working with for a number of years.

In March 2012 it began a new distribution partnership with the company Stailing, located in Moscow. Stailing is a converting company with extensive experience in the Russian wood industry. The new partnership is part of Ekamant’s long-term strategy to strengthen its presence in eastern Europe and widen the accessibility of its abrasive products.

Range of accessories

In addition to its range of coated accessories, Ekamant offers a number of accessories. Its abrasive brushes and brush strips can fit all kinds of machines for finishing and cleaning wood and lacquer. Its finishing concept, meanwhile, includes a wide range of polishing compounds and accessories to achieve a high gloss finish on clear and pigmented lacquers.

It also offers foam-backed abrasives to sand a variety of materials to an adequate finish. These include sanding pads, sanding sponges, super profile pads for sanding narrow profiles, and Ekablue-soft which is suitable for the less aggressive sanding of narrow profiles and hard-to-reach areas.

In the area of machine accessories, Ekamant produces graphite cloth in various sizes, chevron support belts, backing pads for angle grinders and backing pads for random orbital sanders. Lastly, ‘EKA-BRITE’ is a nonwoven product designed for cleaning and polishing a variety of materials such as wood, metal, composites and all kinds of lacquer and paint.

Extensive know-how

Around 90 per cent of Ekamant’s sales come from exports. This is owing in part to its strong local distribution networks which have built up a high level of customer loyalty over the years. All its sales people are technical specialists with extensive knowledge of wood processes. They can offer advice on how to run the sanding machines and can make the right adjustments to them.

Ekamant offers an innovative product in response to the European fashion for hardwood floors. Clearcut is a high performance abrasive with an aluminium oxide grain coating. It is designed for sanding floors made of hard wood species like oak, cherry, walnut, beech, birch etc. As parquet floors become increasingly popular throughout Europe, Ekamant has developed the Clearcut to follow the more advanced demand and competitiveness of the surface treatment of the hard wood flooring industry. Ekamant’s focus has been to develop a product with paper backing with good pressure and heat durability when used for tough sanding applications. n