US wood product machinery manufacturer USNR has announced it has acquired Ventek, Inc., a manufacturer of veneer scanning, grading, and handling systems for the plywood industry.
Based in Eugene, Oregon, Ventek has designed and built vision-based and moisture-based grading solutions for veneer since the company was founded in 1991. Ventek is most known for its flagship patented multi-point diverter, which tracks and sorts trash veneer into the haul back, and random and fishtail veneers onto designated trays.
Rodger Van Voorhis, formerly President of Ventek and one of its founders, added, “I think there are going to be a lot of great opportunities to learn from each other – such as taking our plywood technology and applying it to lumber grading, and vice versa,”.
Van Voorhis has now joined USNR as director of sales for veneer systems. “I am tremendously pleased that Rodger and the rest of the Ventek tea have decided to join USNR to help us build the next generation of products for the plywood industry,” commented Alan Knokey, Vice President responsible for USNR’s plywood and panel business. “The people – the engineers, the service technicians, the guys who actually build the systems, and everyone who supports them – they are the most important part of this transaction.”
USNR / Söderhamn Eriksson operates five large manufacturing plants in the United States, Canada, and Sweden, in addition to more than a dozen regional engineering, service, and sales offices in North America and across Europe. USNR / Söderhamn Eriksson is best known around the world for providing end-to-end solutions for sawmills and planermills, including log lines, curve sawing gangs, edger lines, trim-sort-stack systems, dry kilns, and the optimization and control technologies that maximize the output and performance of that equipment.
