Domotex Asia/ China Floor 2015

The 17th edition of Domotex Asia/ China Floor was held March 24-26 at the Shanghai New International Exhibition Center. With more than 1,275 companies in attendance representing all flooring industries from decking to carpets and turf, this is the largest floor materials show in Asia. The Americhem team joined the more than 30,000 visitors from over 100 countries to learn about the newest trends and technological advances of the flooring industry. Our commercial team enjoyed networking and seeing what the big names in flooring had to display.

Belgian carpet company Beaulieu International Group will invest 13.5M dollars on two plants in Weihai City. They have already began the process of moving their equipment from Belgium to these new China plants. This is just one of many examples that show manufacturing being moved here to China where raw materials and many customers are located.

Shanhua Carpet, which is also located in Weihai City introduced their new line of Tylon products which is an innovative biological based fiber for carpets. These products are made of a new generation of their already eco-friendly fiber Sorona, which is a flexible, renewable fiber used in the carpet industry.

Shanhua also introduced its GY1323 series of carpets that are marine themed. These carpets are made with textures of polygonal cells with shimmering sea and oval patterns like shells on the beach. Paired with a pleasant ocean wall decor, it conveys features of environmental protection and comfort. You can see the trends changing in the industry away from the muted stock colors to more vibrant colors and patterns. There is much less beige living room carpet or self-promoting corporate designs.

The hottest products this year had to be the PE Wood Plastic Composite (WPC) co-extruded products. Sentai, Helong and New Techwood are major players in this market and are bringing the innovation to the forefront of industries such as decking. Right now, their business is going out to Europe, USA and Canada.

There was an educational seminar this year about WPC to introduce its innovation and usefulness to the flooring market. We also learned that Trex plans to enter the China market and will soon introduce their own line of PE WPC co-extruded products.

Domotex Asia/China Floor is always a great event and we are grateful that we were able to attend to see not only our customers, but to see how the industry as a whole is growing.

Contributors:
Frank Li, Commercial Manager, Americhem SUZ
Bruce Zhang, Technical Sales Manager, Americhem Suzhou
Rose Tu, Commercial Manager, Americhem SUZ

Annual Surfaces Trade Show Sees Optimism in the Flooring Industry

In order to understand the consumer carpet marketplace and to stay on top of trends there, it’s an annual tradition for our Carpet & Turf commercial team to visit the Surfaces tradeshow, held in Las Vegas, to gain insight into how our products are promoted throughout the supply chain. This year, we walked the aisles and greeted many customers, industry insiders and experts in our pursuit of the deepest insight into consumer carpet market.

Invista has gained market momentum with their Stainmaster Pet Protect® brand carpet fiber, constructed of nylon 6,6. Americhem colorant is used in 100% of these yarns, which tout stain resistance for acid based stains -- in particular pet urine, feces and vomit (also known in the industry as the three P’s – you get extra credit if you can figure that one out!).  The brand was evident throughout the show, with clever paw print-branded Pet Protect logos at various carpet manufacturers displays.

We met with Industry analysts to give us a sense for the residential and commercial carpet market in 2015. They believe that flooring will grow in the range of four to five percent in 2015 and carpeting will show slight growth of around 1.5% over 2014.

EngineeredFloors had one of the show’s larger booths and used it to promote their Dream Weaver brand. Dream Weaver’s “soft nylon” technology was evident throughout the booth, and the product’s ultra-soft feel is achieved using very fine denier nylon fibers usually reserved for apparel.  Engineered Floors used the familiar analogy of the carrot (for solution dyed fiber) and the radish (for post dyed fiber) to illustrate why the solution dye advantage is so important.

Foss introduced their commercial line of nonwoven carpet tiles, called SmartTransformations. The tile is made up of solution dyed, recycled PET containing an antimicrobial additive. Phenix Carpet, introduced many novel products including a carpet line using a barber pole twist of varying colors of yarn, interspersed with solution dye and post dyed fiber. Phenix’ vice president of product & marketing development Susan Curtis spoke with us and shared the most recent trends, including multiple colors being used in the carpet design.

There were a lot of hard surface floor producers making a strong showing, and luxury vinyl tile is definitely gaining market share. We’re fortunate to have so many carpet manufacturers that are also advocates of solution dye technology  in the industry. Final attendance numbers aren’t in, but we noticed an increase in the number of attendees as compared to 2013 and 2014. Ironically, one of Americhem’s other business teams, our architecture group, was in town for the InternationalBuilders Show, North America’s largest tradeshow for the building and construction industries. We’re grateful for all of our customers, and it was nice to have so many gathered in one city at one time.

Contributors:

John Deignan, President, Americhem Inc.

Matthew Miklos, Vice President & General Manager, Commercial – Americas, Americhem Inc.

Mark Downey, Sales Director, Carpet & Turf, Americhem Inc.

Dr. Vaman G. Kulkarni, Global Business Development Director, Americhem Inc.