The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued on April 30 US patent 8,431,054 assigned to CeraLoc Innovation Belgium BVBA, a company within the Välinge group. The issued patent protects manufacturing methods for wood fibre floors (WFF), such as those marketed under the nadura trademark.
The patented methods include mechanically mixing wood fibres with a binder and wear resistant particles, and then bringing the mixture under heat and pressure. The mixture may be applied on a MDF or HDF core to form a floor panel surface layer with high wear resistance. The patented methods offer an alternative to conventional laminate flooring production.
Today, the Välinge licensee MeisterWerke produces and sells nadura products on the European market. nadura products are also sold by the Swedish Internet-based shop Bjoorn.com. The products will soon be available in North America.
“With this granted patent we have a good protection of the basic powder technology and can increase our activities related to this technical field,” said Niclas Håkansson, CEO of Välinge.“The nadura product, with its high-end surface specification, helps bring the powder technology to the market in addition to the powder backing for the DPL process, which has received great attention from the industry as it is more cost efficient and flexible than the paper technology currently used. Also, the digital print technology combined with the powder is now commercialized as it is the only melamine-based technology of today that provides cost efficiency, does not need impregnation operation, and makes it possible to print directly in line.”