LIGNA – The world’s leading Trade Fair for Woodworking & Wood Processing Industry for 50 Years.

More than 80,000 visitors from the woodworking and wood processing sectors around the world go to LIGNA, to discover innovative technology in machinery, tools, plant processing, alternative energy fuel sources, robotics and automation.

This year Allboards are sending Matthew Jelenc, Managing Director and Daniel Heskes, Production Manager to go and find out about the latest machining trends and capabilities.

This trade fair spans over 100,000 square meters of space, it hosts over 1300 exhibitors and

attracts approximately 85,000 professional guests from around the world.

LIGNA covers a wide range of topics, wood based panel production, Tools & machinery for

custom & mass production, machine components & automation technology, surface finishing, energy efficiency & energy from wood.

Matthew and Daniel arrived in Hanover, Germany on Tuesday and spent the next week and half being wowed by the innovation and automation for the wood industry, looking for ways that we can utilise this technology in Bayswater, Australia to help us to better “Partner with the trades”.

Some of the standout exhibits were the storage machines; technology that will reduce manual handling, minimise floor space and create time efficiency. Boards are loading directly to machines and racking is eliminated creating a more efficient and safer work flow.  

Another key theme this year was automation. Most exhibitors presented integrated systems combining storage solutions, robotics, and conveyors. For example, there were setups where storage systems seamlessly fed beam saws or CNC machines, with robotic arms handling de-stacking and conveyors transporting parts directly to edge banders. These kinds of intelligent workflows were on full display.

Demonstrations included robotic cabinet assembly and the integration of AI for automated quality control—highlighting how digitalization is transforming production lines.

Matthew & Daniel took a slight detour from Germany to go and visit Grundner in Austria. Woodtron (Grundeners’ Australian distributor), introduced our team to Grundner who are a producer of fully automated storage and handling systems for the timber panel industry. Grundner took us to visit some of their customer’s site’s to see some of this technology in practice, which was extremely impressive, and helped to inspire our team to consider what advancements we can make back home. 

We look forward to working with Woodtron in the future to improve efficiences at Allboards and expect to implement some of these technologies when we consolidate our Bayswater sites.