Amorim Unveils New Flooring Portfolio at Surfaces 2009

Amorim Revestimentos, the subsidiary of Corticeira Amorim SGPS, will launch the largest and most prestigious Home and Commercial Flooring Collections in its history at Surfaces 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, February 2nd-5th. With its recent 32 million Euros (44 Million USD) investments in new, state-of-the-art technology, Amorim once again confirms the company’s commitment to the development of the American market for cork flooring. Wicanders, it’s worldwide brand, continues to be the leader in the cork oak flooring category.

Extending the range from cork oak flooring to other product categories including linoleum and vinyl, the new Wicanders Collections unveil trendy, sophisticated fashion features not currently found in the American cork oak market. Combining their eco-friendly R&D innovations of 2008 with exclusive lifestyle and eco-fashion trends, Wicanders Home Flooring Collections and Commercial Flooring Collections truly represent “Nature at your feet.”

A member of the US Green Building Council, with many of its current products certified by GREENGUARD for indoor air quality, Amorim is a leading company in the environmental and social responsibility field as well, promoting business practices for CO2 emissions reduction, management of waste and by-products, and energy efficiency.

Surfaces 2009 is where manufacturers from around the world gather with over 35,000 retailers, distributors, architects, designers, builders, and installers to see and learn about the latest innovations in the floor covering industry.

Amorim Revestimentos has business operations in 14 countries around the world, and sells its products in more than 52 countries.

We’d love to have you visit Team Wicanders in Las Vegas at Surfaces 2009, Booth #2854, Hall A. We’ll be waiting for you!

For those of you who cannot attend Surfaces, please don’t hesitate to contact us  at projects@wicanderscorkoakblog.com or leave a comment below. Anxious to hear what you think of our wonderful, new collections. Until then,

Cheers!

Team Wicanders

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Choosing the cork oak floors that are right for your green building project

As you know, with Wicanders, the possibilities are nearly endless… We put Nature’s palette in your hands, combining textures and surprising colors. The originality and exotic contrasts of each pattern gives any surface a personal and distinctive touch.

But which floors are a better fit for your commercial design needs? Glue down or floating? Xtreme WRT or HPS? Read on, as today we help you determine which Wicanders floors are most suitable for your green building project…

Finding the right finish

Xtreme WRT—Wear Resistance Technology:
Ceramic is, after natural diamonds, the hardest known substance in the world. Our floating cork oak floors coated with Xtreme WRT finish with ceramic micro-bead technology, is a perfect choice if you are looking for a matte, unique, and durable finish with low maintenance.
We want you to feel assured that you are making a good, long-term investment when you choose Xtreme WRT flooring from Wicanders. Even with its hard and resistant features, Xtreme WRT gives the floor soft and natural qualities and none of the usual slippery and cold feel provided by ordinary finishes.

HPS—High Performance Surface:
The high traffic on commercial floors puts much demand on the floor and the finish. Wicanders commercial quality floors are produced with hard-wearing surface lying between the veneer and the HPS topcoat, which makes it extremely wear resistant.
Our HPS finish is based on nano beads technology. Extremely tiny beads are embedded in the top layer giving the whole surface improved properties such as scratch, slip, scuff, and stain resistance—without compromising the natural appearance, elasticity, and beauty of of our cork floors. If you are in search of flooring for high traffic areas with an extremely durable, low-sheen finish, Wicanders Cork Flooring with HPS is the choice for you. With a 15-year commercial warranty, we are confident you will love the look and feel of our HPS floors.

Glue-down versus Floating

Floating:
Wicanders Cork Oak floating floor planks are engineered with the patented CorkLoc® system on all four sides. Each edge is comprised of durable compressed cork fiberboard and Cork Protect®, a natural parafin-based all-around edge sealing system. This tightly pressed seal seamlessly vaccum locks against any and all moisture and debris, setting Wicanders CorkLoc® system apart from other floating floors.

Glue-down:
If your project calls for glue down tiles because of the area of application or the size of the job, Wicanders Series 200 and Series 2000 are the ideal products for you.

Wicanders Series 200 WRT "Natural"

And for a complete guide with detailed info on dimensions, LEED qualifying points, approximate installed cost, and our best-in-the-industry warranty, please be sure to download our 2008 Commercial Flooring Guide.

We’d also like to remind you that we have just launched a new Technical Info page right here on our blog. You can visit it by clicking here. Or if you have any questions you’d like answered, our master installers are always handy, so be sure to drop us a line.

Until next time…
Team Wicanders

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Amorim & Wicanders. Green Building, GreenStars Award Winners!

We’re so proud…Interior Design magazine has recently chosen Amorim, and our Wicanders brand of naturally unique Cork Oak Flooring to receive it’s inaugural NeoCon GreenStars Award. The award was granted based on “a fantastic sustainable product and message at NeoCon 2008.” At NeoCon, Wicanders was singled out as “the only cork seller to control the entire process from seedling through harvest and manufacture, key to minimizing the product’s environmental footprint.”

Amorim & Wicanders—GreenStars Award Winners

Interior Design judges also praised our Xtreme WRT (wear resistant technology) finish which is considered to be the most revolutionary innovation in the flooring market. If you visit our blog often you know that our WRT finish contains tiny, ceramic, micro-beads that protect our Cork Oak floors against abrasion, scratches, UV rays, dirt, insects, and more, while guaranteeing all the natural qualities of our eco-friendly floors are preserved, letting their beauty shine through. You may want to read our story about The Mighty Penny—A Lesson in Conservation & Sustainability.

Mark Strauss, Publisher & Vice President of Interior Design magazine, writes: “The movement towards sustainability is such an important factor in our industry, and in our world, so we are naturally very excited about this new program and plan to promote it heavily.”

With all the moving, emotionally charged stories about the winning athletes at the Beijing Olympics, we thought this would be a good time to let you know about another one of our awards. Although it’s not a Gold, Silver, or Bronze medal, it’s still a treasure to us.

Thank you, Interior Design magazine. We’re honored.

Team Wicanders

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Consumer Reports Says ‘Green gets better’

"Harmony"

We think so too. Our R&D department always pays close attention to Consumer Reports. They just rated [08/2008] our Series 1000 HPS (High Performance Surface) Harmony cork oak flooring from our Originals Collection. In test results for the sunlight and stain category Harmony received 2 Excellent ratings, 1 Very Good for resistance to scratches, and 2 Good ratings for water and dents. The really cool thing about our HPS finish is its durability and resilience, which is ideal for high traffic residential areas, commercial and public spaces.

Now, Consumer Reports calls our HPS layer ‘plastic’, which could give you the wrong idea…actually HPS is based on nano beads technology, where extremely tiny beads are embedded in the top layer. When compared with the standard finish this gives the whole HPS surface improved properties such as scratch, slip, scuff and stain resistance. Which is really good protection for our precious cork oak floors…and it carries a whopping 25 year residential warranty and a 15 year commercial warranty. Pretty good, huh?

Mentioned also, it seems as if some manufacturers of cork floors simply place a photo of cork between the surfaces of their product, but they point out that we actually use “the real stuff” (cork). How amazing is that?

"Series 1000"

Just one more thing…Consumer Reports doesn’t seem to have a category for sustainable, renewable, natural cork oak floors, so they placed Harmony in the ‘Plastic Laminate’ category. But you know the difference, of course, and the reason why our cork floors are definitely worth the price.

If you frequent our blog, you know that we make continuous efforts in R&D to optimize the shared value of every ounce of cork oak. We look forward to seeing ratings on our latest design, performance, and eco-friendly innovations: Cork Plank, Xtreme WRT and Acrodur®.

Until the next report…
Team Wicanders

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Green Building? Think Wicanders Cork Oak Flooring

You’d almost think architect Eric Gjerde, AIA, was writing our cork oak blog! Posted at 7:09 am and 9:25 am on Saturday, July 26th, seems like Eric was up early writing about cork floors on his GreenBuildingToday blog. Yes, cork is a really ‘green’ building product, which is why we all believe he spent several hours of his time writing about it on Saturday when he could have been sleeping in.

Two articles by Eric, “The Top 10 Reasons Why I Like Cork”, and “Cork is a Green Building Product”, are excellent. Of course, we’re a bit partial…but that’s to be expected.

He ends one post with, “Love that Cork” and “Remember to Tread Lightly or Less, Be Green, Be Happy.”

We couldn’t have said it better. Thanks Eric!

And to all the architects out there thinking about using cork in your flooring projects, we’ve got some great samples we can send to you. Just ask by leaving a comment or send us an email at projects@wicanderscorkoakblog.com.

Team Wicanders

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