Flooring Industry News February 2022

Apprentices to tackle ‘chronic skills shortage’

The UK’s leading flooring contractor has created its own apprenticeship scheme to tackle the “chronic skills shortage” in the  industry which has led to a “bidding war” for fitters.

Designer Contracts took on its first batch of 10 apprentices last week, taking advantage of the new block release training scheme that has been launched as a joint venture between FITA (Flooring Industry Training Association) and Webs Training Ltd.

Full article by The Stocklists.

Flooring drives inflation surge

Flooring and furniture are key drivers of retail inflation as a four-fold increase is reported for January due to soaring demand and continuing shipping issues for imports.

Latest data from the BRC-NielsenIQ shop price index showed the non-food inflation more than quadrupled from a flat 0.2% in December to 0.9% in January, a period when overall retail inflation doubled from 0.8% to 1.5% – the highest rate of increase since 2012.

Full article by The Stocklists.

Voting now open for 2022 CFJ/CFA Awards

The product section of the CFJ/CFA Awards has now opened for voting and will close on Friday 29 April. This includes nominations for manufacturer and distributor of the year, as well as for our outstanding achievement award.

The awards will once again be held at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire, on Friday 9 September.

Full detail from Contract Flooring Journal.

Furnishing spend grows despite inflation concerns

According to the latest figures from Barclaycard, consumer expenditure on flooring, furniture, and home improvements grew substantially in January amid mounting concerns about rising costs of living.

While card spending increased 7.4% in January compared to the same month in 2020, the furnishing industry experienced a 16.9% gain. Overall, data from Barclaycard, which processes nearly half of all credit and debit card transactions in the United Kingdom, shows that spending on non-essential items grew at a slower pace in January (6.1%) than in December (11.5%), owing to a combination of continuing Covid concerns and rising living costs.

Full details from The Stocklists.

60th Anniversary Flooring Show 70% sold

The Flooring Show’s 60th anniversary is seeing a surge in demand for exhibition space at the September event in Harrogate.

According to organisers Ocean Media, this year’s show, which begins on September 18th and runs for three days, is proving to be highly popular, with 70% of exhibition space already sold with more than seven months to go.

“It’s probable that the exhibition will sell out quickly,” says event director Alex Butler. “At the moment, the flooring business is booming. Our exhibitors are reporting fantastic sales statistics, and we’re looking forward to another profitable buying season in September”

Full details from The Stocklists.

A whopping 6,000 tonnes of waste vinyl flooring has been collected through Recofloor since the scheme was founded in 2009 by leading flooring manufacturers Polyflor and Altro.

The material is recycled into new flooring and traffic calming items once a sustainable pickup service for commercial waste vinyl flooring is provided. Recofloor is an excellent illustration of the circular economy in construction when it comes to post-consumer trash.

Recofloor has collected 6,000 tonnes of unwanted vinyl flooring, reducing 7,038 tonnes of CO2 – the equivalent of removing 1,837 cars off the road for a year.

Full details from Recofloor.

FURTHER READING

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