Sustainability is Key for Swedish Hardened Wood Flooring Manufacturer Bjelin

Woodura® technology, developed by Bjelin’s sister company Välinge Innovation, lies behind the Swedish company’s hardened wood flooring range. The great idea of Woodura is that it is based on making more out of less. According to Hannes Boman, Head of Design at Bjelin, this design philosophy feeds into the company’s mission to bring more sustainable wood flooring products to market, while also operating a more sustainable business.

If we consider how a traditional parquet product is made, the basic process involves sawing the individual lamellas, so these tend to be quite thick. Also from each lamella you get a lot of fine particles as a result of the sawing process. This is wasteful and, because you are working with a thicker lamella, you are getting less surface area out of the log in the end.

The principle of the Woodura technology is that you are slicing the lamellas, so there is no waste. The process allows you to use a really thin top layer, meaning you can get ten times more surface area out of the log, compared with a traditional parquet product.

“Both of these factors together allow you to make more out of less,” says Hannes Boman. Another factor is about ensuring that what you make lasts longer as well. That is the hardening process and is key to the Woodura technology.

“We are hardening the top layer so it gets three times harder than the traditional parquet product,” says Hannes Boman. “This means it is very resistant to indentations and damage. We understand that if you buy a product which is made in a really environmentally friendly way, but it has to be changed after two or three years, then that is not good for the environment.”

Consideration should also be given to the raw material itself. Bjelin works with FSC®-certified wood from the Croatian forest, which is responsibly managed.

“FSC is a label from a recognised third party. They check how the forest is harvested and verify that it is sustainable. Our factories in Croatia are very close to the forest. No log is transported more than a few kilometres from the forest to the sawmills, and the basic principle is about ensuring that you have more growth in the forest than you actually take down, saving critical areas of the forest to maintain biological diversity. So it’s about keeping the forest healthy.”

The company also makes sure that it fully utilises all the parts of the log, using different gradings and formats. This approach is crucial, if you want to use the whole log. Bjelin is known in the market for its large full plank formats, but in order to meet market demand and help use all of the log, it has added a number of smaller formats.

“We started with the XL and XXL formats,” say Hannes Boman, “but now we have Large, Medium and Small, as well as Herringbone. This means that we can make use of a lot more of the log.”

Bjelin also uses the parts of the log which are unusable as planks in its production processes. 

“The bark mainly goes for the production of energy, which is used for heating our factories and also drying the wood,” says Hannes Boman.

“Also you have to split the log in various sections to get the slicing cut and that does produce some sawdust. We use this in the powder, which goes underneath the veneer as part of the Woodura technology. In this way, waste products can be recycled.”

If any waste that is produced can be used to make new products, that is the ideal solution. In fact the Woodura technology not only uses waste produced by Bjelin, but also waste material from other companies’ production processes.

Some of the colours which the company develops, for example, are achieved by sourcing waste from cacao bean production, which is readily available and is also inexpensive, showing that being sustainable can be cost-effective as well. 

Looking to the future, Bjelin is running trials on even thinner veneers than its current 0.6mm standard, which is already market leading in terms of its economical use of materials. 

Bjelin firmly believes that sustainability and innovation go hand in hand. One of sister company Välinge Innovation’s new technologies, Nadura®, started as a recycling project.

Bjelin’s aim is always to produce a more aesthetic product which is also more durable – this shows that innovation, design and sustainability go hand-in-hand at Bjelin.

www.bjelin.co.uk