Claude Howard, Statesboro GA has the distinction of giving MiCROTEC North America their first mechanical equipment order, a planermill lug loader. The installation was necessitated because the old ducker style lug loader was not able to consistently deal boards at any lug speeds over 85 lugs per minute. The lug loader installation was accomplished in a few days and the morning of December 17th; saw the mills first scheduled day of production.  

Ken Appeldoorn, the mills project manager had some reservations about giving the lug loader order to a new company,  but commented that he felt comfortable with giving the order to MiCROTEC because he was familiar with all the people (MiCROTEC North Americas staff is comprised of 13 ex-Newnes employees). Ken also made the comment that “the project went very well and that the lugloader, MiCROTEC’s controls changes and changes to the planer infeed have contributed to about a 25% increase in piece count”. Ken additionally commented that he “was impressed, but not surprised by the efforts of the start-up guys on site”. 

MiCROTEC North America manufactures a complete line up of lumber handling, scanning, optimization and control solutions for the lumber and secondary wood manufacturing industry.