Category: News

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.”

 

CFL Flooring (Creative Flooring Solutions), the worldwide leader in Stone Polymer Core (SPC) and other multilayer flooring new materials, has been growing rapidly over the last years. The company now employs 4,500 people and has invested more than US$140 million in the last 18 months. Its second-to-none production facility covering an area of 700,000 ft2 in Calhoun, Georgia (USA) is now fully operational. In addition to its US, Taiwan, Vietnam and southern Shanghai operations, the Company also started a large new facility in Hunan, China for its expansion in the Chinese market. CFL grew about 50 % in 2021 with a very strong order book going into 2022.

The success of CFL over the last years has not gone unnoticed. The founders have decided to let external PE investors join CFL in order to prepare the company for the next growth sprint all the while keeping a strong overall majority ownership. The new investors will allow the company to accelerate its international expansion, as well as further its reach within the Chinese market.

While the investors will not drive operations, they will bring with them, among other things, know-how related to international financing, HR, corporate governance and public relations.

The company will continue to bring first-to-market technologies to the industry allowing its loyal customer base to differentiate and excel in the market. The company is the inventor of waterproof laminate flooring, engineered stone-based flooring, SPC flooring, and several other products out of new materials with new patented technologies coming to market very shortly.

HAMONT, BELGIUM – i4F, a group of companies providing patents and technologies to the flooring industry, today announced that CFL has signed a new license agreement with i4F for its low gloss, matt effect surface finishing technology. The technology, is exclusively available via an i4F license as one of its surface finishing cluster innovations.

Through the use of a sophisticated patented curing process, this technology delivers a highly realistic matt surface on panels with a minimal variance of gloss grade over time. Additionally, the technology significantly improves surface properties on critical dimensions that can be applied to all levels of gloss. This reinforces flooring panels’ micro-scratch resistance levels and makes cleaning easier – on low gloss as well as standard gloss flooring.

Tom van Poyer, CEO of CFL says, “We strive to offer the market high demand flooring solutions and that’s why we selected this unique technology only available from i4F. Experience has shown us that i4F has the required know-how and flair to find the latest and greatest flooring industry innovations. This NatureTrend coating will be a key part of our Firmfit Original and Firmfit Silent collections being introduced across Europe in February 2022. Surfaces 2022 visitors will be able to see our more commercial PureCoat Rigid Core lines using the same technology on our booth in Las Vegas.”

i4F’s CEO, John Rietveldt, adds, “We are delighted that CFL has signed a new i4F license for this highly sophisticated surface finishing technology. This innovative technology not only meets growing consumer demand trends for low gloss/matt flooring, but also delivers some truly meaningful benefits including reduced light reflection under any angle, easy maintenance and enhanced surface performance.”

Read in the press

Thomas Baert, owner of CFL, helped host customers for an exclusive look into the new 700,000 s/f state-of-the-art manufacturing facility that has been in construction for over a year.

“This marks a next step in our plan to become a global manufacturer,” Baert said, “drastically increasing  the convenience of working with our partners and distributors.” Due to travel limitations, this was also the first time Baert was able to view the actual facility and see firsthand the progress that his team has made in building out the factory, office, and showroom space.

“The excitement of our customers was amazing!” Says Perry Coker, CEO of CFL North America, “We have been talking to them about U.S. production in a conceptual way for the past couple of years, so we were extremely proud to have our customers visit and see that everything is actually coming to fruition.”

In recent months, CFL has added numerous team members and eventually will add 350+ new jobs to the local north Georgia area.