Washington—When the North American Laminate Flooring Association (NALFA) was formed, its first mission was develop a set of minimum manufacturing standards to determine if a product is constructed to withstand a certain level of performance expectations. While guidelines established by NALFA have been in existence for more than two years, the standards have now been given formal approval by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The new NALFA/ANSI Standard sets forth a list of performance-based specifications and testing methods for residential floor coverings defined as laminate floors by the organization’s Glossary of Terms.

The association is now in the process of developing a set of standards for commercial products. Officials said it will be at least a year before the contract guidelines are submitted to ANSI for final approval. For now, products which pass the residential tests mean they meet a variety of requirements in areas such as static load, thickness swell, impact resistance, light resistance, cleanability/stain resistance, radiant heat resistance, wear resistance, dimensional tolerances and castor chair resistance. As Bill Dearing, NALFA’s president explained, “These are the areas important to consumers in terms of what they expect from a laminate floor covering. Basically, what the standards do is, offer a great deal of assurance to everyone in the supply chain as to the quality of the product.”

Unlike in Europe, where a similar set of standards established by the European Producers of Laminate Flooring (EPLF) recently went into effect, the ANSI guidelines are voluntary. In Europe, it is a matter of law in which all laminate products marketed in the region must meet the minimum requirements. “We cannot force anyone to meet the standards,” Dearing noted. “A company can choose not to meet them if it wants. I don’t think that will happen, especially among NALFA’s membership, because it does not serve any advantage to have a product which does not meet a set of established, agreed upon minimum guidelines. “On the other hand,” he continued, “by having a product tested and certified that it does, in fact, meet the standards is a good marketing and selling tool—from the manufacturer through the distributor and down to the retailer. It benefits the entire selling chain, which, in turn, is a benefit to the end user since she can be assured the product she is buying will perform to at least a certain level of criteria.

Obviously, those companies which make and/or sell products that exceed the minimum standards will have even more of a selling point.” A company does not have to be a member of NALFA to get a product tested. For a product to qualify as meeting the ANSI Standard, a company must have a sample tested according to the protocol established. The procedure incorporates America Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) ratios and guidelines. Dearing said there are a number of ways for a mill to have a product tested: It can submit a sample to North Carolina State University where NALFA has formed a partnership as the school has all the necessary equipment and facilities to conduct an objective test; a product can be given to an accredited testing laboratory other than N.C. State; a company can do its own in-house testing provided it meets the approved protocol, or any combination of the above. He noted, because the procedure to test a product has been laid out in a strict, specified format, and the number of approved testing laboratories in North America is limited, it will be rather hard for a company to pretend its product was not only tested but passed.

Once a product has been deemed to meet the minimum standards, companies can attach an official designation to it and all packaging and marketing materials. NALFA is developing its own logo, Dearing said, but ANSI provides a decal as well. Also, in order to keep the designation, a product must be undergo third-party testing at least every five years, or whenever it has been substantially changed. It should also be noted that each product line must be tested individually. That is, if a company sells three collections—Good, Better, Best—then one sample from each must be tested for all to qualify. The number of SKUs a particular line has does not factor in, only the individual collection. Also, it makes no difference whether the product is installed with or with-out glue, all can be submitted for testing. “The standards are for the plank itself,” Dearing said. “These are strictly performance guidelines, because once the product is installed, it is a floor. “The standards were developed to help differentiate from the mills which sell cheap products and pawn them off as quality. These tactics help to discredit the legitimate companies. But, by having standards, the laminate category as a whole can be protected.” —Matthew Spieler