Palax is the trusted brand for the professional firewood producer Pekka Rinne

Pekka Rinne has been producing birch firewood for 15 years in Finland. His company, ”Pekan Klapi ja Monitoimi Oy”, has grown at a steady pace due to increased demand for firewood – currently the company is producing nearly a thousand cubic meters of firewood per year.

With the growth of the business, Pekka has invested in more efficient logistics: in 2010, he made a yard for stacking firewood and three years later, he built a storage hall. Furthermore, the Palax firewood processor and related accessories have recently been upgraded to meet the needs of increased production. Pekka’s choice has always been Palax, and nowadays he uses C900, a circular saw machine for professionals, and packs the firewood into potato boxes for easy handling.

Effortless firewood production with potato boxes

In the early years, Pekka stacked the firewood on pallets. When the storage hall was completed, he started to use sacks of 1 m3 and 1.5 m3 that he unloaded in the hall to wait for autumn and winter. During the high season when customers come to pick up their firewood, the front loader and the trailer have been important tools for him.

A few years ago, Pekka got tired of playing with sacks and started making firewood into potato boxes. To their advantage, Pekka considers their handling; with a forklift, and also with tractor fork tines, the boxes can always be picked up without leaving the cabin. When using sacks, he had to jump out of the cabin to get the sacks on tines. In professional use, the sacks were also quite short-lived and difficult to empty. But with potato boxes, emptying goes smoothly when you can use a box rotator.

Palax firewood production line behind the efficiency

Through the Forestry Association ”Lounametsä”, Pekka has been receiving raw materials of high quality for many years. It’s essential that birch fiber is of the approriate size; playing with the overly sized curved trees is a waste of time.

At Pekka’s company, Palax firewood processor with its accessories has always been at the heart of the production. Last winter, Pekka replaced the seven-year-old Power 90 S with the new C900, while upgrading the old Palax Deck to the Palax Mega log deck. He says that he’s been really pleased with the updates. As an extension of the line, Pekka also has Palax Cleaner. The production line is orchestrated by the Massey Ferguson tractor; sometimes by the old 135 and sometimes by the new 4709.

Next, Pekka plans to invest in drying the firewood more efficiently. Currently, he can use a floor air duct to dry a small amount of fresh firewood on the other end of the warehouse. However, drying firewood in potato boxes is smoother and emission-free, so at this point he plans to continue that way.

Although the hall has 400 squares and the boxes are stacked on top of each other, meeting future demand may also require investing in a hot air dryer. “The dryer would make it possible to recycle the debris from Palax Cleaner”, says Pekka.

Pictures: Pekka Rinne (pictured at the bottom) makes his firewood usually during late winter: Palax C900 works perfectly also when it’s -20 C. As a result, the storage hall is filled with firewood almost all the way up to the rafters.