Identification and Ranking the Effective Criteria for Site-Locating of HPL Veneer Factories in Golestan Province

Regarding to various applications and adequate characteristics of HPL veneer such as beauty, mechanical strengh, un-absorption of water and vapor, as well as chemical and thermal resistances, the need to this veneer has been developed in different industries and local production make possible exchange saving. Therefore, investigating the effective criteria on optimal site-locating of HPL veneer factories has been important. For this study, the Golestan province was selected as one of talented provinces in wood industry. The effective criteria on HPL veneer site-location has been recognized and classified into "Economics", "Substructure", "Humanity" and "Materials and product" groups. The survey data has been gathered from experts, industry holders and academic connoisseurs in 2009. Weighting and ranking of measures has been conducted using flexible and practical AHP technique and the Expert Choice software. The results revealed that among 23 investigated effective criteria for site selection of HPL veneer the score of factories, the status of lateral industries with the score of 0.115, high capacity of investment absorption (0.095), number of competitors and sale markets (0.088), and assurance in supplying raw materials (0.071) were selected as priorities. By the way, the weights of materials-product, substructure, economic, and humanity criteria were derived as 0.339, 0.283, 0.268 and 0.110, respectively.