1 – What is Commercial Plywood?

Commercial plywood is made by gluing together multiple thin layers, or plies, of wood veneer, with each piece of ‘ply’ being oriented at a right angle to the one beneath it. This process of layering and cross-graining creates a strong and durable material that would be resistant to warping, cracking, and splitting

2 – Specifications: 

• Size: 1220x2440mm, 910x1820mm, 910x2130mm,…
• Face/back: Bintangor/ Okoume/Sapele/ Engineering veneer/ Pine…
•  Core veneer: Eucalyptus, Acacia, Mixed wood, Hardwood, Rubber…
•  Glue: MR/E2/E1, E0
•  Thickness: 2.5/2.7/3.2/ 4.6/6/7/ 8/9/11/12/14,15,16 17/18/24, 25mm etc…
•  Sanding 2 sides, hotpress 2 times
•  Thickness tol: +/-0.5mm
• Moisture content: less than 14%

3 – The advantages of commercial plywood include: 

Good quality: With a thorough production process, commercial plywood is evaluated as meeting high quality standards, ensuring the mechanical properties and aesthetics of the product. 

Durability and stability: Commercial plywood has high strength and good bearing capacity. Stable humidity helps prevent shrinkage and deformation due to weather changes. 

Flexible Applications: Commercial plywood can be used in a variety of fields such as packaging, construction, furniture manufacturing, and many other applications.

4 – Uses

Vietnamese Commercial Plywood is mainly used for wardrobes, bed frames, interior frames,…

5 – How can Vietnamese commercial plywood be produced ?

Step 1: Harvest the logs 

Input materials for Vietnamese plywood are usually common woods: acacia, eucalyptus, rubber… are selected and harvested in the planted forest. Round timber with a diameter of over 12cm, cut down and cut into pieces according to standard sizes

Step 2: Peel and slice the wood 

The freshly harvested wood will undergo basic preliminary processing, peel off the outer shell, then put into a specialized machine to turn into thin wooden panels ensuring a thickness of about 1.7mm-2mm. The core veneer is usually peeled off by a machine from the outside to the center until the log is gone. The cutter used for this stage must have a sharp blade, ensuring that the veneer layers have a uniform thickness and do not break

Step 3. Sorting and drying 

The core veneer will be divided according to the type of wood and size, and at the same time remove the non-standard panels 

After that, the board will be dried by sun to reach a moisture content of 20%-30% and then put into the machine dry 

Under controlled temperatures, the core veneer is dried to a standard humidity. At the end of the drying process, the board continues to be classified based on the surface in the order of grades A, B, C, D, F corresponding to the increasing number of defects.

Step 4: Arrange the core veneer

This is a very important stage, determining 90% of the quality of the finished board. The layers are glued and continuously stacked into a long chain, the joints are fixed together with plastic nails. At the end of line is a specialized cutting machine that has been adapted to cut into each rebar plate according to the standard size.

Step 5. Cold press and hot press

Cold press: The core veneer after cutting and stacking into bales will be put into cold pressing to flatten and spread the glue evenly between the wood layers. This is considered the first step in shaping the plywood as desired. 

After being cold-pressed, the board will be taken to repair the bait for the 1st time, cut off the residue or fill the gap between the joints, ensuring that both the surface and the core veneer are flat and smooth to transfer to the hot press. 

Hot press: the board will be pressed with great pressure, which will help the adhesive layer to flow out, and the bond between the board layers is stronger. The core veneer is hot-pressed until the specified humidity is reached, ensuring the required flatness. The moisture content of the board will depend on the purpose of use of each type, with Vietnamese commercial plywood will have its own regulations on humidity below 14%.

Step 6. Surface bait repair 

The hot-pressed core veneer continues to be repaired for the second time, the surface bait to ensure aesthetics as well as quality. 

After that, the bait must be allowed to cool down to continue the next processing stage

Step 7. Sanding 

The core veneer is fed into a specialized machine for sanding in turn on both sides with a support device for automatic flipping and preliminary cutting to produce boards that are generally uniform in size

Step 8. Cold Pressing and Hot Pressing Surface 

The wood panels have been coated with glue and the face will be put into cold pressing and hot pressing similar to that of core wood. These stages help the surface to bond closely with the core, as well as reinforce the adhesion between the layers of the boards. 

With commercial plywood, Vietnam has many types of face veneers such as: Bintangor, Okoume, Birch, Pine, …

Step 9: Cut to standard size 

Semi-finished boards are measured and cut to the required size. At this step, the board surface is required to be flat and clean, the size of the board must meet the standard, and the corners must ensure safety

Step 10: Inspecting the goods, sanding the edges of the board and packing After face pressing will be re-checked: 

-Core quality: use a hammer to knock again to see if the board is smashed 

-Face quality: Is the surface flat and beautiful or is there a problem of fraying, glue seepage? 

-Use a hand scrubber to sand the edges of the board to make it more beautiful.

Plywood that does not meet the quality required by customers will be rejected. The goods will be packed with pallets and sturdy bales before being loaded onto the cart and sent to the customer.

6 – Classification by core

Currently on the market there are many popular types of commercial plywood. In Vietnam, there is currently no exact standard for types, but basically importers can classify Vietnamese Commercial plywood according to the following factors and characteristics:

Classify by	Types	Character
Core	AA	Core AA is the best standard product of Vietnam, including many the A layers core, so the thread cross-section is straight, beautiful, almost no holes on the core
	AB	Core AB is an average standard row, besides the A layers, there will be an additional the core of layer B (with small knot from 2-3 cm) so the core layer is not straight compared to AA, sometimes with holes but shallow and extremely low rate of <3%
	ABC	Core ABC is considered a cheapest product, in addition to layers grade A and B, there will be additional the C layers (with wooden eyes from 3-5 cm, irregular colors), so the core layer will not be straight beautifully, with overlapping, holes but controlled shallow level
Material core	Acacia	Due to the natural properties of wood, Acacia core is normally black
	Eucalyptus	Due to the natural characteristics of wood, Eucalyptus remains will be pink and red
	Mix core	Mix core characteristics are difficult to identify, depending on the type of goods, many different types of wood can be mixed

Classify Eucalyptus and Acacia core

7 – Large Vietnamese commercial plywood export market

In 2024, the Vietnamese wood industry aims to export 15.2 billion USD, of which wood and wood products are over 14.2. billion USD, up 6% compared to 2023. Timber exports will prosper in 2024

Vietnam is proud to be in the top 10 exporting Commercial plywood in the world, typically the market is Korea, Malaysia, India,Japan, Singapore, Thailand,..