More than 150 industry professionals from 23 countries followed this call and became part of a remarkable event: The Flooring Summit, held on September 26 and 27, offered more than a dozen table top displays by OLBRICH industry partners, technical expert speeches, a live demonstration in the Technical Centre and, of course, time for networking among all participants.
There was also time for a thorough look into OLBRICH´s engineering and manufacturing capabilities right in its corporate headquarters. Many visitors were surprised to learn that the group employs around 950 people today and serves various industries with its core technologies for coating, printing, laminating, drying, embossing and winding.
After the factory tour, the highly innovative digital printing technology (in close partnership with company Ricoh) on polymer surfaces and subsequent lamination of the decor layer was introduced to the industry. “This created a lot of excitement for future applications, especially for the so-called design flooring, such as LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tile)” agreed Thomas Hülsmann and Johannes Kamp, both in charge as Sales Managers for the flooring industry at OLBRICH. A live demonstration in the Technical Centre explained the details of this technology. Due to the large number of attendees, the live demonstrations were split into two groups, in order to allow a close look at the process whilst OLBRICH´s laminating and embossing line PLA1 was in operation.
“The new digital printing technology with Ricoh has been developed for PVC based surfaces in the wallcoverings industry and will now be adopted for further applications, especially in the flooring industry. We consider this new technology a corner stone for our future expansion into new markets” said Sales Director Josef Doeing “and the positive feedback encourages us to further serve our valued customers in the flooring industry.” OLBRICH´s Technical Centre offers even more opportunities for product developments that are close to real production conditions”.
The event marks another milestone OLBRICH has set for the flooring industry and it already triggered a lot of positive feedback from the participants: “… thank you for having given us the opportunity to take part in the flooring summit. Perfect organization, interesting topics, knowledge exchange and the live demonstration, it was a great day! It has demonstrated the capabilities of OLBRICH and the will to move forward” wrote one visitor from England.
We thank all our customers, partners and suppliers that participated and thereby helped to make this event such a success!
