Category: News

Adairsville, Ga. 2nd November 2023 – The Resilient Floor Covering Institute (RFCI) recently concluded its annual Fall Board of Directors and Associate Member Meeting in Sarasota, FL, bringing together professionals from various sectors of the resilient flooring industry. Among the attendees was CFL Flooring’s own Barron Frith, Secretary/Treasurer for RFCI. Reflecting on the event, Frith remarked, “It’s inspiring to witness the resilience and innovation that define our industry. Together, we are shaping the future of resilient flooring.”

During the meeting, expert speakers addressed critical topics such as RFCI’s strategic deployment, economic variables, flooring industry trends, and key initiatives by the American Chemistry Council. Discussions also focused on navigating business strategy in uncertain times, reviewing regulatory issues, and examining the construction outlook. A thought panel comprising RFCI Officers tackled pivotal questions concerning the resilient industry.

The event also marked the formal introduction of the new Board Officers for 2024. Chairman Herb Upton of Shaw Industries was honored for his enduring leadership at RFCI, including his two years as Chairman. Additionally, Teresa Williford, RFCI Director of Programs and Services, was celebrated for her 15 years of exemplary service and leadership within the organization.

Former NFL star and ESPN personality Merril Hoge delivered an inspiring presentation titled “Find a Way,” drawing from his eponymous book. The meeting resonated with a sense of shared purpose and determination, setting the stage for a promising future in the resilient flooring industry.

Adairsville, 22nd June 2023 – CFL Flooring, a global leader in flooring solutions, proudly announces the recent grant of a new US patent for Ceramic with a locking system. This groundbreaking innovation marks another significant milestone in CFL Flooring’s continuous efforts to lead the flooring industry through unparalleled ingenuity and forward-thinking solutions.

The newly granted patent signifies a revolution in tile installation methods, by introducing a cutting-edge system that enhances ease of use and durability. This patented technology combines a mineral based core layer with a stone or ceramic and includes a special reinforcement layer which ensures exceptional strength and durability. One of the standout features of this groundbreaking invention is the addition of a user-friendly locking system allowing for a fast and hassle-free installation process; thus, eliminating the need for traditional methods involving mortar or glue. Homeowners, flooring contractors, and flooring enthusiasts can now enjoy the benefits of a seamless, efficient, and convenient installation experience.

“We are thrilled to announce the grant of this US patent for our Ceramic with a locking system,” said Thomas Baert, Cofounder and President of CFL Flooring. “This revolutionary technology not only simplifies the installation process but also enhances the overall durability and strength of our ceramic tiles. At CFL Flooring, we are committed to driving innovation and delivering exceptional products that exceed customer expectations.”

By obtaining this patent, CFL Flooring further expands its extensive portfolio of intellectual property rights. The company’s commitment to leading flooring innovation is exemplified through the continuous development and acquisition of groundbreaking patents. The US patent for Ceramic with a locking system is a testament to CFL Flooring’s dedication to revolutionizing the flooring industry and providing customers with cutting-edge solutions.

CFL Flooring, a renowned leader in innovative flooring solutions, proudly announces the recent grant of a new patent in the United States. This groundbreaking patent represents a significant step forward in the realm of flooring technology and adds to CFL Flooring’s already extensive portfolio.

The newly granted patent is a testament to CFL Flooring’s continuous efforts to revolutionize the industry. It encompasses an innovation in mineral-based building panels, wall panels, and flooring, introducing a range of remarkable features that surpass existing solutions. The core of this cutting-edge product is waterproof, high-strength, and entirely free from PVC, fiberglass and other plastics. Furthermore, it showcases exceptional resilience, remaining unaffected even in the face of extreme humidity and heat. The Mineral Core Boards are also compatible with the most popular locking systems, ensuring ease of installation and versatility for consumers.

“This patented technology is an important milestone to bring affordable and plastic free flooring solutions to the market, a direction that CFL is ready to embrace and lead. Focus on sustainability creating a fully recyclable product to market is a big focus of the company” Thomas Baert, coFounder and President at CFL Flooring.

CFL Flooring’s dedication to leading flooring innovation has resulted in an extensive patent portfolio, with the recent addition of the Mineral Core Boards patent further solidifying the company’s position as a pioneer in the industry. These patents demonstrate CFL Flooring’s commitment to advancing the field through research, development, and the pursuit of groundbreaking solutions that meet the evolving needs of customers worldwide.

Adairsville, GA 9th December 2022 – In order to continuously improve the sustainability of our products, CFL Flooring has undergone a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to assess the environmental impact of a product throughout its lifecycle, from extraction of rawmaterials through its manufacturing up to its end-of-life enabling the Company to issue EDPs (Environmental Product Declarations) for its Rigid Core Floors.

 

Such analysis helps set a baseline and identify areas of potential improvement:

•  Selecting materials that respect health and the environment and with lower greenhouse gas emissions throughout its life cycle;
•  Promoting optimized use of resources in our production
•  Setting up manufacturing closer to the market (e.g. is our facility in Calhoun, USA);
•  Creating new sustainable technologies, that allow us to reduce the use of materials or improve our transportation-related GHG emissions.

 

“Sustainability within CFL is one of the utmost important objectives throughout our innovation efforts,” said Thomas Baert, President & Co-Founder of CFL. “Measuring progress and making it transparent is key to push that progress forward.”

 

“Generating the LCA data allows us to also develop Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) – transparent and objective reports that communicate how a product impacts the environment across its entire life cycle.” Says Konstantin Mishagin, CFL Director ofProduct Management and Sustainability. “We see a rapidly growing global demand for quantitative environmental information, especially in the building materials market segment, in particular because it enables our clients to earn credits for sustainable buildinglabels, such as LEED, BREEAM, DGNB and others.”

Shanghai, 15^th November 2022 – CFL Flooring has completed the Materiality Assessment in a preparation for its first, publicly available Sustainability Report.

The materiality assessment helps identify the material ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) issues and challenges for CFL – from sustainability and climate change to social responsibility and diversity, impact of these issues and challenges on company’s business and stakeholders’ expectations, advancing CFL’s long-term sustainability strategy.

We evaluate against the ISO26000:2010 CSR Guidelines, GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. We then compare this range of potential material topics against the corporate priorities set by the Board and our executive team, evaluating the risks and opportunities associated with each topic and their importance to our business’ bottom line.

“This is our first materiality assessment, and it will help us align our sustainability roadmap with our stakeholders”, Thomas Baert.

Barron Frith, President of CFL Flooring North America, was elected as Secretary/Treasurer for the Resilient Floor Covering Institute during the RFCI Fall Meeting at the Resort on Pelican Hill on Tuesday. Barron brings with him a breadth of expertise and experience that we’re convinced will be of huge value for the category.

 

More in the news:

https://www.floortrendsmag.com/articles/109903-cfl-president-joins-rfci-board-of-directors

https://www.fcnews.net/2022/10/barron-frith-joins-rfci/

 

The CFL team was thrilled to be recognized with the 2022 GreenStep Practice/Process Honoree award for our patented Be-Lite technology at the Dalton Golf & Country Club yesterday! Floor Covering Weekly’s GreenStep Sustainability Awards honor those in the industry making great sustainable strides among their initiatives, products, people and practices.

Be-Lite is a thermoforming technology for SPC panels that, depending on the panel’s thickness, uses up to 20% less raw materials during the panel core manufacturing process. The resulting lighter SPC panels maintain optimum performance reducing a panel’s total manufacturing raw material costs as well as decreasing transport costs significantly.
CFL has entered into a technology partnership with i4F Patents & Technologies to extend the positive impacts of this more sustainable SPC panel production to the broader flooring industry.

WASHINGTON, DC, August 17th, 2022 – The Vinyl Sustainability Council (VSC), a self-funded business council advancing sustainability in the vinyl industry, has welcomed CFL Flooring as the newest member of the council. VSC membership is reserved for organizations taking a leadership role to advance sustainability throughout the vinyl industry.

“We’re pleased to add CFL Flooring to our list of more than 55 members demonstrating a commitment to sustainability efforts in their business practices,” said Jay Thomas, VSC executive director. “Collaborating with CFL Flooring in these efforts helps advance the impact of sustainable flooring products and continue to add value for consumers.”

CFL Flooring is the largest manufacturer of stone-plastic composite (SPC), and other hybrid flooring products worldwide. Recognized globally as an innovator, CFL Flooring is committed to developing, manufacturing, and marketing sustainable, value-added flooring products. CFL employs over 4,500 associates around the world, including the United States, China, Europe, and Vietnam. The company balances years of technical flooring expertise with the common vision of of leading flooring innovation. CFL’s extensive patent portfolio made up of hundreds of patents, granted and filed, is a core element in fulfilling this vision of.

“Sustainability within CFL is one of the utmost important objectives throughout our innovation efforts,” says Thomas Baert, Co-Founder and President of CFL. “At CFL Flooring we see collaboration as the only sustainable way to create a real circular economy and drive positive change,”

“VSC is an excellent collaboration platform for companies with strong commitment to environmental, social, and governance. We look forward to enhancing our sustainability efforts with like-minded companies to develop industry-wide post-consumer recycling programs and reducing our environmental impact” said Konstantin Mishagin, Director of Product and Sustainability Management at CFL Flooring.

CFL recently launched a pilot take-back program in Asia to focus on taking back cutoffs from product installation and looks to expand the program into key markets in the United States and Europe.

About the Vinyl Sustainability Council
The Vinyl Sustainability Council (VSC), founded in 2016 in partnership with the Vinyl Institute, is a collaborative platform for companies, organizations, and other industry stakeholders to come together to advance the U.S. vinyl industry’s contribution to sustainable development. Through its +Vantage Vinyl® verification program, the VSC aims to drive continuous improvement across all three aspects of sustainability – environmental, social and economic performance. For more information, please visit https://vantagevinyl.com/

Calhoun, GA, USA, January 27^th, 2022 – CFL Flooring (Creative Flooring Solutions), a pioneer in manufacturing value-added flooring products, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted patents related to its acoustic multilayer flooring products, further strengthening the Company’s intellectual property portfolio. CFL also holds similar patents in Europe and in other countries around the world.

The granted patents cover the structure of CFL’s acoustic flooring products that offer a solution to one of the bigger challenges in flooring, sound. These products are designed to significantly reduce generated, reflected, or transmitted impact sounds, leading to a performance up to 6x more sound absorbing than standard 5mm SPC with 1mm cork underlay.

The products concerned are commercialized as NovoCore Q in North America and Firmfit Silent in Europe.

“As a leading flooring innovator in the industry we strive to improve the acoustic performance of the products on the market. It is with great pride that we have now found solutions for customer needs for improved sound reducing flooring products” said Thomas Baert, Owner and President of CFL. “This innovation confirms our drive to bring value-added products to the market away from standard commoditized products. Our industry benefits when healthy margins can be obtained throughout the whole supply chain and we are excited to bring these first to market proprietary products to our loyal customer base,” he added.

• CFL Flooring signs new i4F license for Digital Printing
• CFL Flooring’s next-generation rigid core lines to use Hymmen Digital Printing

HAMONT, BELGIUM – i4F®, a group of companies providing patents and technologies to the flooring industry, today announced that CFL Flooring has acquired a Hymmen JUPITER digital printing line for its US facility and, has signed a new digital printing technologies license agreement with i4F. This reinforces CFL’s long term digital printing strategy as well as the company’s commitment to innovation “firsts” whilst reducing its carbon footprint. CFL’s next-generation rigid core produces will be produced using Hymmen’s JUPITER JPT-C print-to-board line.

With some 4,500 employees, CFL Flooring is a global leader and innovator in rigid core manufacturing as well as other hybrid vinyl floor covering solutions. Over the last eighteen months, the company has heavily invested in its state-of-the-art production facility in Calhoun, Georgia (USA), that is now fully operational. The new JUPITER digital printing line will be located in Calhoun and be used to produce CFL’s next-generation rigid core lines.

In addition to the multiple design and production advantages, CFL’s decision to buy the digital printing line was driven by its goal to reduce its carbon footprint as well as to become more sustainable. Digital printing eliminates the need for certain elements, including décor films and plastic wear layers, thus reducing the total amount of PVC use, reducing plastic waste, as well as reducing the impact of supply chain strains linked to production.

Decors and structures of Hymmen´s DLE plus collection 2022

Designed to enable 24/7 industrial production, Hymmen’s JUPITER JPT-C print-to-board lines deliver intelligent and highly precise register accuracy. This ensures the highest levels of color stability and print quality output while maintaining printing speeds of 25-50 meters per minute.

i4F licenses the world’s most advanced digital printing technologies and offers exclusive access to all Hymmen digital printing technologies in the flooring sector. Digital printing will play a crucial role in the future of new material flooring as it enables unlimited design and embossing-in-register flexibility and can be applied to a wide range of materials. This facilitates faster response times to market demands and trends while reducing material waste.

“CFL has long been committed to its vision of leading flooring innovation,” said Thomas Baert, President and co-founder of CFL Flooring. I believe we were the first manufacturer to push rigid core in a massive way. Our aim is to continue to be top of mind with our partners when they think of first to market innovations and second-to-none marketing and customer support. Digital printing is the next logical step.”