LVL enables timeless and unique furniture designs

Being robust, lightweight, and easy to handle – LVL (laminated veneer lumber) is one of the most interesting materials for furniture design in the future.

Traditionally when we talk about LVL we start to think about beams and columns in wooden buildings. But what we don’t know is that LVL is paving its way to becoming one of the most interesting materials in the furniture industry because of its lightweight yet strong structure – not to mention its ability to be designed into the most imaginative shapes.  

Tero Tirronen, an entrepreneur from mid-Finland founded his company Puutaito Oy 20 years ago when Metsä Group started their LVL production in Punkaharju, Finland. “We started working with Metsä right from the beginning by refining Kerto™ products. Our expertise was in CNC machining technology, so LVL’s features and its machining became familiar to us in many ways. This led to the birth of Punkalive brand, which product family is designed of LVL.”  

Tero quickly got excited about LVL and this led to various experimentations. “LVL’s excellent features led early into innovation experiments. I started testing how we could combine industrial material with high design. Innovations were based on products made with machining techniques which gave us a lot of freedom design vise. This technique didn’t require mold pressing or creating expensive molds, which are more often the case. Besides this, our technique made it possible to do small series of designs which allowed us a strong customer-centric approach to our furniture production.”  

Why LVL then is a good material for furniture production? “LVL made of Spruce, as a light-colored wood species is easy to tint to any color imaginable. Our production also creates a striped side surface which is usual in LVL products. We believe these kinds of designs are timeless and unique. From the design point of view, LVL is excellent because of its structural strength. You can basically design almost anything from it. Not to forget the possibility to design round shapes instead of only straight shapes.”    

Tero predicts are bright future for LVL. “Not only is LVL going to be a successful material in the construction industry, but also in high quality, long-lasting, sustainable furniture. And our customers legitimate this. They appreciate and value single substance solid wood, lightweight but robust products, high design, domesticity and relatively reasonable prices which all can be achieved with LVL based products.”