Cork: From Wood Waste To Hi-Tech Flooring

With its Cork Oak forests, Portugal is undisputedly the center of the global cork industry. In recent years, floor coverings have undergone a gradual change, with their robustness, feel and appearance all evolving.

Manufacturers of pre-finished cork parquet have quietly capitalized on the trend toward LVT (luxury vinyl tile) in the floor covering industry, with cork largely being replaced by vinyl as a covering layer. No other country in Europe is home to as many manufacturers of LVT products as Portugal.

Portugal has been a major manufacturer of cork flooring for some 60 years. As glued parquet flooring, it was sold in the standard dimensions of 12”x12” and 24”x12”. In the 1980s, Germany became more aware of the importance of protecting the environment, with the Green Party making up the government for the first time in the first state parliaments in Germany.

Cork appeared to be an ideal product made from renewable resources and was marketed as the “ecological floor covering”. The standard 30x30-cm cork tile was manufactured from by-products from the bottle cork industry and low-quality cork. Cork, therefore, became the dominant floor covering in German households in the 1980s.

Stabilising floor

However, it was not easy to lay the flooring. The substrate had to be level, and adhesive was applied to the entire underside of the cork tiles, which were then sanded and sealed – clearly a task for an interior contractor, rather than a home handyman.

In 1990, the Amorim Group began gluing the cork substrate onto MDF, creating a new product. The cork stabilizing layer was used to both dampen impact sound and level out the floor in case of slight unevenness. The standard tongue-and-groove profile was added to the MDF middle layer.

It was possible to lay floating flooring of this type. The process simply involved gluing the tongue-and-groove joint with PVA glue. This enabled even home handymen to lay the floor, allowing manufacturers to tap into high-volume markets.