Board manufacturer Egger has celebrated construction work beginning on its recently acquired site at Mark Bibart, where the company is building a new recycled-wood processing facility.
The plant has been part of the Egger Group’s portfolio since November 2023, with the company committing to investing up to €200m (£166.7m) into the site to increase its recycling and production capabilities.
The total construction and renovation programme is due to be completed in Autumn of 2026. Once finished, will allow the site to process recycled wood into high-quality Egger products, in line with the company’s ethos around the circular economy. Egger has also said it plans to use the site to produce chipboard laminated with decorative surfaces in the future as well.
In addition to the upgrade and construction of the site’s recycled wood processing, lamination capacities and automated storage areas, Egger’s agenda also includes optimising existing facilities at the facility. At present, the Markt Bibart plant has facilities for the production of raw chipboard with an annual capacity of up to 600,000 m3.
Once fully up and running, Egger also says the upgraded plant will create roughly 50 new jobs for the local area.
Construction work at the facility has been underway since September, and is scheduled to continue until Summer 2025. Egger celebrated the start of construction yesterday, on October 24, with a ground-breaking ceremony at the plant.
The event saw Michael Egger Jr, Egger’s chief sales officer, as well as supervisory board members Fritz Egger and Walter Schiegl, and members of the Markt Bibart plant management welcoming guests to the site.
“We are convinced of the great potential of the Markt Bibart plant,” assured Michael Egger Jr, Egger’s chief sales officer. He continued: “It is in line with our strategy to continuously develop our plants and keep them at the cutting edge of technology. We have planned a number of far-reaching strategic projects that will significantly develop both our use of raw materials and our product portfolio at the site.
“We are proud that we can start construction work so quickly. This is a great team effort. We would like to thank our employees and partners as well as all political decision-makers for their constructive cooperation.”
At the start of this year, Egger hosted a press conference at its headquarters in Tyrol, Austria, where it brough together senior leadership figures from Blum and Häfele to discuss the biggest issues currently affecting the kitchen sector. They concluded that the current divisive political climate, as well as the end of post-Covid consumer demand, were among the industry’s biggest ongoing challenges.