Interesting facts 

Guaranteed quality of component parts together with low prices are the cornerstones for work with the vast majority of furniture factory suppliers. An experienced distributor treats such customer request as a market axiom and is anxious to offer high-quality cost-effective products.

Why TECHNOPLAST's PVC edge banding is worth buying

LAMINATE-SERVICE is among the most reliable and reputable suppliers of furniture materials and needs no advertising. But a new product added to the line of goods offered by the company last year - PVC edge banding materials under the US trademark TECHNOPLAST - deserves detailed presentation.
For several years there has been a steady market trend among the furniture manufacturers towards PVC materials rather than melamine edge banding.
"The problem, however, is that the use of expensive PVC edge banding in comparison with melamine products results in cost increase for furniture manufacturers and subsequently in marketing repositioning of finished products," says Pavel Zhukov, LAMINATE-SERVICE General Director. "This is quite risky for any furniture company: even a small jump in prices can affect the sales volume and business stability. Which means that factories when purchasing component parts find themselves in the "I wish I could" situation. Therefore, while choosing a partner for PVC edge banding supply, we tried to consider the strategic interests of our customers and offer edge banding, which has, in our opinion, the best price-quality ratio in the country."

TECHNOPLAST CO. LTD products are better known overseas. Having gained leading positions on the US, Canadian, Brazilian and South Asian markets, the company has succeeded in reaching the Russian and CIS markets. TECHNOPLAST considers this to be a strategic step since this region represents a huge sales market.
High level of the brand awareness and image have been telling arguments for LAMINATE-SERVICE experts. But the main fact that interested Russian businessmen was the price and consumer properties of TECHNOPLAST products, which are comparable to those of products by the leading players on the edge banding market.- "The quality of PVC products is directly related to their chemical composition", emphasized Pavel Zhukov. - High quality edge banding should contain only PVC pellets (95%) and modifiers (5%). But in order to make the product cheaper manufacturers add calcium, which leads to a deterioration in product quality. This means that a low price of edge banding materials often implies an obvious violation of standard manufacturing techniques.
TECHNOPLAST has managed to offer PVC edge banding materials at quite low prices and at the same time guarantees the integrity of their chemical composition. Our managers have carried out thorough studies of the edge-banding manufacturing process and edge banding material tests with the leading furniture factories in St. Petersburg. In addition, during the first sales year we constantly conducted customer surveys about the quality of TECHNOPLAST edge banding products. These enabled us to influence the supplier by improving the quality of products. During this period we have solved several problems which we faced at the first stage: we have added a double UV-layer protecting the edge banding strip against mechanical damage, significantly expanded our standard product line, using laboratory facilities we have fabricated colour patterns identical to the most popular chipboard colours, modified the embossing process in accordance with the requirements of our distributors, began to produce edge banding of various softness depending on the season. The latter has turned out to be necessary due to large temperature differences in Russia.
"Having become the sole TECHNOPLAST representative in Russia and the CIS, we are able to carry out autonomous factory inspections of the incoming raw materials quality, manufacturing operation stability and finished products quality."

Seven years ago TECHNOPLAST CO LTD moved its core production facilities to China in order to retain competitive prices for its products in the international market. (Today many well-known Western companies manufacture products in China and many goods bearing prestigious trademarks are now made in China). The existing thermoplastics factory, which passed into the hands of the US investors in 1998, has been completely refitted and, in addition, TECHNOPLAST has invested $20 million in constructing a new state-of-the-art facility. It was put into operation in January 2000. In 2005 the company's turnover was $120 million. TECHNOPLAST's key marketing concept for gaining access to new markets is to consider local requirements for size, colour, softness and other properties of edge banding materials. There is no any standard all-purpose line of products in the company. According to James Lay, TECHNOPLAST engineering director, this is simply impossible since the company has an individual approach to each customer. The company's professionals are confident that they have managed to make products for the Russian market which satisfy the demands of furniture manufacturers.

The LAMINATE-SERVICE inventory package includes PVC edge banding products with three main types of surface texture: smooth, shagreen ("orange peel") and wood grain embossing. The colour of the inner layer of edge banding completely matches the colour of its facing surface. Dyes used for manufacturing have six degree ultraviolet resistance, i.e. the edge banding will not fade or change colour. The inside surface of all TECHNOPLAST's PVC edge banding products is coated with primer enabling the use of any type of hot melt adhesive. Today the inventory package includes 27 colours, month's stock of edge banding is 3,000,000 linear meters, the following standard sizes are available: 0.5 mm x 19mm, 1mm x 19mm, 2mm x 19mm, 2mm x 26mm, 2mm x 36mm, 1mm x 21mm.
In addition, custom-made edge banding products are available on request.
"Although demand for custom-made edge banding products is not extremely great, the desire to stand out among other competitors forces manufacturers to develop and use unique finishing elements for their furniture," says Pavel Zhukov. "And edge banding can be perfectly used as a distinguishing proprietary feature. Manufacturing and approval of a new colour pattern by the customer will take approximately 3 to 4 weeks. Some suppliers declare shorter terms for custom-made production, but in practice the process generally extends for two or three months."