Melteca plant celebrates 40 years

The first Melteca laminated board was pressed at the Laminex NZ board manufacturing plant in Hamilton back in 1983 and this year they are celebrating their forty year anniversary of continuous production. Bob Nordgren from JOINERS Magazine took the opportunity to speak with Laminex Plant Manager David Miles about the facility, his experiences there and the changes to date.

The Hamilton factory site has undergone considerable expansion since it first opened back in 1983. From the original building which had farmland all around, it’s now in an industrial hub and consists of some six buildings that include both the Melteca board production machinery and paper storage area, the samples production facility and adjacent board storage space.

The facility impresses with its size, safe and tidy appearance and almost understated efficiency. “We make all our Melteca board here and deliver to customers in New Zealand and overseas” comments David. “We can produce as little as one sheet to spec if need be and it is not uncommon to have several such sheets included in any particular order. We can take an order, press it often within a two day turnaround.”

The day I visited they had plenty of spare storage space to which David noted they had just sent off a week’s worth of production.

“We are continuing to raise the bar with 2022 being yet another record production year for the plant.” he says with a smile.

With some twenty years at the plant David has seen the operation’s growth first hand but what does he see as the most important changes in that time?

“The biggie is the paper we use on the board. We used to buy the treated paper (impregnated with resin) from Germany but now we buy the paper only and do the impregnation here. This is significant as it now gives us total control of all materials we use and all processes involved in board production, this in turn gives us great production flexibility.”

I also wondered about the huge range of Melteca colours available. David comments “Although we produce a core number of colours all the time fashion of the moment often dictates the wider choices available. We have a relatively new part of the factory where we store a huge range of papers we can use.”

Part of the factory tour was to the facility where board samples are made. In talking to Karl Hutton, Samples Operator, I discovered some 2 million, yes that’s right million, samples are made at the factory and distributed every year. And who gets these samples? Well it turns out apart from customers a lot of kids get them to play with! Samples of off range decors are donated to playcentres.

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