• Manufacturing innovative flooring for almost half a century

    9 May 2012

    Amtico International has been a leader in the field of innovative flooring solutions for the better part of 50 years. Early in the company’s history, its leaders developed a unique technology, the underlying principles of which have been established throughout the flooring industry, becoming known as the Luxury Vinyl Tile (LVT).  

    As they have throughout their history, Amtico has recently introduced an innovation, which will further service their customer’s needs and again change the industry. 

    One of the characteristics of Vinyl is that it has the potential to be recycled; however practical considerations have prevented it from being recycled in its post-consumer form. Over the past two years Amtico has been hard at work developing a process to recycle LVT waste, post-consumer, back into their product. Previous to this ground-breaking development it was widely accepted throughout industry that closed loop and practical recycling of LVT was not possible. 

    Typically, when the topic of recycling LVT was discussed, the long held assumption was that the end product can only be of inferior quality; commonly this type of recycling ends in the production of road cones or some other similar inferior product.

    However, not only can Amtico boast the ability to recycle LVT, it now has processes in place to recycle LVT back into their original high quality product. Through this revelation, Amtico has again solidified its position, as a business driven by innovation and customer needs. 

    Thanks to well-placed manufacturing operations on multiple continents, Amtico is the only company in the world able to utilize this process in an efficient and cost effective manner. “Innovation is what allows us to thrive… it is very important to us, within the process itself, that we recycle everything,” says Simon Mills, Marketing and Design Director, Amtico International. 

    The key to Amtico’s success as a company, who considers green initiatives a core part of their mission, can be witnessed in their drive to make the product itself as “green” as possible. Contrary to the processes of many of its competitors, Amtico personally engineers and produces a vast majority of the products they sell. Inherent in the ownership of their own manufacturing, Amtico has a very high level of control over these products and their production.

    Amtico has placed emphasis on efficiency and recycling for over twenty years; long before “green” was a flashy marketing and agenda item. 

    Mills continues, “We have been working as a company, as a responsible manufacturer throughout our history, to ensure that our processes are as efficient as they can possibly be; from an emissions perspective, from a landfill perspective and from an energy perspective.”

    Additionally, the life of the product, in and of itself, is a “green” phenomenon- Amtico offers an uncommon 20-year commercial warranty. 

    Founded in 1964 as a joint venture between a U.K. and American company, Amtico has grown to a multi-national giant in the flooring arena. Recently, Amtico formed a partnership with a Hong Kong based, luxury furniture and home furnishing supplier, Tiffa-Living. Through this partnership, both Amtico and Tiffa-Living are pleased to be expanding the breadth of high quality Amtico flooring and products to the greater Asian market. Tiffa-Living, under the direction of Kenneth Wong represents Amtico International in Asia. “LVT is becoming quite well recognised and popular in the Asian market”, says Kenneth Wong, Director of Tiffa-Living. 

    “Amtico is a very well established brand around the world and we are please to offer it to our customers”. 

    Amtico has already existent relationships with many large multi-national corporate clients, including but not limited to Gap and HSBC. It is interesting to note that HSBC has actually written Amtico flooring into its official brand map, which outlines the design specifications for its branches worldwide.

    Many of Amtico’s clients already have international presence and these clients have asked that Amtico provide the same type of support for them in the Far East that already exists in Europe and the United States. 

    The specific development of the process by which efficient recycling of LVT can take place was a two-year mission. As the originator of the product, Amtico was in a unique position to create the new recycling process- thanks to their knowledge of LVT and the way that it is made.

    Inherent in the challenge of creating this process are many practical concerns, including the simple fact that the product is glued down. Thus, when LVT is removed from commercial spaces, wastes additional to the vinyl have to be dealt with. In order to deal with this challenge Amtico has put in place quite a few specific processes. 

    Thanks to various manufacturing locations around the world, Amtico is able to efficiently transport all waste to appropriate hubs where they can be recycled, creating a closed loop process. Even if their competitors could recycle post consumer LVT, the transport costs and emissions caused by that transport alone would be enough to make the process inefficient and detrimental to the environment.  

    Amtico has created its brand around a simple core principal: a business built on listening to customers. Innovations, in this way, are a direct result of feedback from and conversations with those customers. In short, Amtico’s customers are international, so they will also be international. Customers had a need for post consumer recycling of LVT, so Amtico made it happen.

    Beautiful, highly durable Amtico Luxury Vinyl Tiles are now available in Greater China from TiFFa Living Co. Ltd

    Contact us at: www.tiffa-living.com

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