Unilin enters into a partnership with Wood Loop

 Thursday, August 31, 2023

Unilin and Wood Loop jointly take a step towards circular economy. With a responsible vision to reduce waste and focus on recycling wood, Unilin has successfully concluded an exclusive partnership with the Dutch company Wood Loop to recycle more wood waste together. This minimises the volumes of incinerated waste and allows Unilin to place maximum focus on recycling in order to manufacture more chipboards using recycled material.

For a number of years, Unilin has been committed to recycling. “For some time now, the wood mass of the chipboards we manufacture in our plants has consisted of 90-95% of recycled wood”, says Kristof Van Hoye, Group Project Manager Circular Economy at Unilin.

“For that production we recycle 900,000 tonnes of wood waste per year that is sourced from, for instance, waste and demolition companies or recycling centres. At the same time our Recover project collects chipboards and other wood surpluses from major customers based in Belgium, the Netherlands and Northern France. Together with Dutch company Wood Loop we are now doing the same for smaller customers who use smaller quantities.”

Wood Loop was founded by the Koninklijke CBM, the Dutch industry federation for interior design and furniture industry. The organisation offers every wood processor, retailer and panel materialmanufacturer in the Netherlands an interesting formula to recycle their surplus chipboards. Next year MDF will also be added to the list.

“The furniture industry obviously uses a lot of panel material”, says Wood Loop’s Dirk van Deursen. “In the Netherlands their consumption even accounts for one third of the total wood stream, or 635 kilotonnes per year. One sixth of those new panels that furniture makers or interior builders use in their manufacturing process unfortunately ends up in the waste container. Thanks to Wood Loop, Unilin can recycle these surpluses. This enables the group to cut its overall CO2 emissions by 95,000 tonnes.”

Tags: circular economy, Unilin, wood and panel, wood recycle, woodworking and manufacturing, woodworking industry, woodworking UK