2017 Is A Busy Year For The Carpet And Floor Covering Industry

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2017 Is A Busy Year For The Carpet And Floor Covering Industry

A host of events will keep the carpet and floor coverings industry busy in 2017. Domotex in Hanover in January showcased interesting new trends in floor coverings. Indian rugs and carpets received praise and awards for innovations.

The 33rd Indian Carpet Expo is scheduled from March 27-30, 2017 in India. The show has been attracting important international buyers from across the world.

The 6th World Carpet Congress is planned for June 8 and 9, 2017, in Belgium. Another upcoming event is the Arab Carpet Expo from September 12-14, 2017 in Abu Dhabi. And then Domotex has its China and Turkey editions this year, besides a number of other local trade shows across the globe.

Indian design wins accolades at Domotex

Indian designs are finally being recognised and appreciated the world over. At Domotex Hanover, Indian companies and India-inspired designs were some of the favourites in the Carpet Design Awards. In the Carpet Design Awards category - Best Modern Design Deluxe (original contemporary designs showing optimum use of materials), India's Choudhary Exports was among the three favourites. In the Best Traditional Designs category it was of course, Jaipur Rugs that was the clear winner. Jaipur Rugs also won in the category of Best Modern Collection (contemporary design collections demonstrating a common theme). And Tissage, from India, was among the top three favourites in this category.

A total of 1,409 exhibitors from more than 60 countries showcased their latest innovations to a global audience at the Hannover Exhibition Center, once again impressively highlighting the innovative spirit and high performance capability of the floor coverings industry.

Around 70% of visitors were from abroad, with the majority (43%) coming from EU countries. There was a considerable increase in visitors from the Near and Middle East (up 9%) as well as East and Central Asia (up 16%). Appreciably more visitors came from the US and the UK, in particular.

Flooring trends

With a wide array of creative ideas, innovative materials and smart solutions on show in 2017, the industry once again demonstrated just how attractive floor coverings can be. The latest trends revealed a strong focus on sustainability and natural-looking designs.

Carpeting in the form of tiles and planks continues to gain in popularity. In terms of colour, carpets in subdued sand and stone hues are trending, as are vibrant colours and sophisticated patterns. Innovative floor laying systems are creating opportunities for simple, flexible and environmentally friendly application techniques.

World Carpet Congress 2017 to explore future opportunities

The World Carpet Congress will be held this year under the central theme The Carpet Factory of the Future, shifting attention from the decorative functions of carpets and textile floor coverings in houses, offices, hotel lobbies and public transport, to research and development. The Carpet Factory of the Future is created today by the sector's transition into a sustainable and high-tech industry, with a cross-sectoral approach and open innovation policy, organisers report.

The 6th edition of the World Carpet Congress will focus on different application areas and innovative opportunities for textile floor coverings, carpets and rugs. The event, a joint initiative of UNITEX, Fedustria and Centexbel, will take place from 8-9 June 2017 in Ghent, Belgium.

The previous edition of the Congress was attended by more than 250 participants.

Arab Carpet Expo 2017 to serve the growing MENA market

Abu Dhabi is set to organise the second edition of Arab Carpet Expo from September 12-14, 2017. The Middle East & North Africa (MENA) is expected to invest US$ 4.3 trillion in the construction sector, by 2020. These include investments in housing, transport, education and other developments. It is expected that this level of investment will spur residential and commercial real estate development, creating massive demand for carpets and floor coverings.

The first edition of Arab Carpet Expo in 2015 had attracted 47 exhibitors from 15 countries, and visitors from 34 countries. For Indian carpet manufacturers, the show is an important one. Residential and commercial real estate investments have slowed down in India, dampening demand for floor coverings. MENA is thus an important alternative market for the industry.

Sustainability remains key in carpet industry

Second only to diapers when it comes to taking up landfill space, around 3.5 billion pounds of carpet are tossed each year in the US. Because carpets are made up of such a complex array of chemicals, like latex and PVC, they're next to impossible to recycle.

Mohawk, the second-largest carpet distributor in the US, wanted to address this challenge for the industry. "We have a track record of innovation at Mohawk," says Tom Lape, the president of Mohawk's residential division. Mohawk partnered with the Dutch manufacturing company DSM, who along with the tech startup Niaga ("again" spelled backwards), had devised a way to manufacture fully recyclable carpets using just one material-polyester. Mohawk adapted that technology into its new line of Airo carpets, which launched in January at the International Surface Event in Las Vegas, where it won awards in product design and innovation. The carpets will hit the consumer market later this year.

The simplicity of the Airo monomaterial carpet is a far cry from the traditionally constructed carpets that proliferated throughout homes in the 1950s and 1960s, leaving tack marks and scrapes on hardwood floors when ripped up and sent to landfill. "Most people don't understand, but carpet is a highly engineered material," says Bruce Petrovick, the account manager for DSM North America. "The way it's traditionally made, it contains multiple layers, and each layer contains multiple different types of materials."

In its simplest form, traditional carpet has two layers: a backing and a face fibre (the part you walk on). The face fibre is either made of nylon, polyester, or polypropylene. That's attached to a backing made of either PVC or latex; the two layers are bound together with a combination of polypropylene and calcium carbonate. The early carpet manufacturers, Petrovick says, had one goal: to figure out how to hold everything together-and chemicals were effective at doing so.

As the culture evolved to embrace recycling and sustainability, carpets remained an intractable problem. To effectively recycle them, "You have to do a lot of very costly steps," Petrovick says, including separating out and purifying all of the different materials. Consequently, recycling a traditional carpet is only feasible by hiking the overall product price, which Petrovick says consumers wouldn't stand for. "Nobody wants to eat that cost," he says.

Mohawk and DSM-Niaga looked at this issue, and decided that the industry was looking at carpet recycling all wrong. It wasn't enough to apply the same process to a faulty product; the product itself would have to be reinvented. By manipulating pure polyester to form every element of the carpet, from base to tufts, the flooring, when discarded, can be returned to the manufacturer, ground up, and repurposed as yet another carpet. The "closed loop" nature of the production cycle, Petrovick says, will also stabilise prices.

The environmental implications are significant, Petrovick says. Polyester is made from crude oil, which-like the concept of recycling itself-hadn't seemed like an issue to early manufacturers. But if the Airo technology can cut down on the amount of crude oil extracted from the ground, it could point the carpet industry on a path toward circular sustainability. "The new carpet construction process creates a more sustainable soft floor covering," Lape says; every Airo carpet, upon being discarded, can be recycled into a new carpet of a different style.

Mohawk's Airo carpets, once on the market, will act as the test run for how consumers respond to this new development. Lape hopes it will be positive. In addition to the sustainability element, the carpets don't require tack strips to be installed, meaning they can be laid directly over wood or linoleum without damaging the original flooring. "There's a lot of potential with this technology," Lape says. "At the end of its life, the Airo carpet will have an economic value that the carpet industry will want to utilise," adds Petrovick. And one that won't destroy the planet, either.

Heimtextil awards sustainability

With the "Young Creations Award: Upcycling", this is the fifth time that Heimtextil has awarded a prize to young designers for their sustainable creations.

The prize, which is endowed with a total of 7000 euros, is a Europe-wide competition. Heimtextil honoured the winners, who included young designers from Germany, Hungary, Estonia and the Czech Republic.

"As the organiser of the leading global trade fair for home textiles, it is our aim to strengthen the market for green textiles and function as a guide and source of inspiration. As part of this approach, we support companies, designers and up-and-coming creative individuals to work in a way that encourages progress and saves resources", explained Sabine Scharrer, Director of Heimtextil, during the award ceremony.

Best room concept comes from Budapest

Sustainably designed "room concepts" were honoured for the second time. The winner was Zsófia Beliczay from the Metropolitan University of Budapest with her work "Fix Textile". The prize winner presented a textile and concrete blend with a visible woven structure that can be used to separate and design rooms.

Mönchengladbach designer wins prize

In the category "Upycling Objects", Michael Wolf from the Hochschule Niederrhein won with his project "Inemuri hitotsu". "The successful work was based on extensive research into materials science", announced the judging panel. The result is a clever table cover that appeals with its recycled blended mix of fabrics from various old textiles - an absolutely innovative material.