Vietnamese Plywood Mill: Annual Throughput Doubled with AF-VD-2400 Dryer

The challenge

A top-10 Vietnamese plywood exporter was running three legacy jet-box dryers, each 18 years old. Combined throughput was 18,000 m³/year of dried veneer — well below the 38,000 m³ demand from their four downstream press lines. The bottleneck was costing them roughly USD 2.4M per year in lost sales.

Spare parts for the legacy dryers were no longer available. The customer was considering a full replacement of their drying capacity.

Our approach

Our application engineers visited the customer's mill in Ho Chi Minh City and ran a 3-day capacity study on the existing dryers. We recommended replacing all three with two AF-VD-2400 roller dryers — using the customer's existing biomass boiler as the heat source.

Key technical arguments that won the customer:

• Roller dryers achieve ~30% lower energy consumption per m³ than jet-box dryers because the heat-transfer coefficient is higher and there is no high-temperature air recirculation
• The 8-zone PID temperature control on the AF-VD gives a more uniform moisture gradient — critical for face-grade veneer quality
• Two machines instead of three reduces the floor footprint and the number of operators needed

Results after 24 months of production

• Throughput: 18,000 m³ → 38,000 m³/year (+111%)
• Defect rate: 5.8% → 0.9% (-84%)
• Energy consumption: -31% per m³ of dried veneer
• Uptime: 98.4% across 24 months
• Payback: 22 months at the customer's throughput and energy costs

What made the difference

1. Honest capacity modeling: Our application engineers spent 3 days measuring the existing dryer performance before sizing the replacement. No over-promising.
2. Biomass integration: We re-used the customer's existing biomass boiler instead of selling them a gas burner they didn't need. Saved them ~USD 180,000 in capital cost.
3. On-site commissioning by our regional service hub: Engineers from our Bangkok hub handled installation and training. No travel from China for warranty issues — most problems resolved by the local team in under 24 hours.