Azrock's three-pronged portfolio includes Achieve, shown above

By Melissa McGuire
When it comes to long-running shows on Broadway, undoubtedly Cats comes to mind. When it comes to long-running commercial resilient brands, Azrock must be a big part of the conversation.

Now a division of Tarkett- Johnsonite, the 80-year-old brand has always been associated with a stellar reputation of providing VCT, homogeneous and heterogeneous solutions to building owners, commercial contractors, facility managers, and architects and designers. Now it’s earning its stripes in the sustainability arena. And it comes at a time when controversial PVC studies threaten to negatively impact the category.

For Azrock, it all has to do with aligning with the Tarkett Balanced Choice approach, which guides the company to create floors that are good for people, the environment and the bottom line. The focus is on four areas: creating people-friendly spaces, developing better materials, consuming fewer resources and reclaiming products at the end of their lives.

1.Creating people-friendly spaces. This is an area of priority for Azrock. Why? “Ninety-percent of our time is spent indoors,” said Diane Martel, Tarkett’s vice president, environmental planning and strategy. “What we breathe is what’s in this room.”

But it goes beyond Azrock products, all of which are FloorScore certified. The philosophy extends to strippers and polishers, where Azrock is constantly working to reduce the amount required. That’s because polishes and strippers can create odors. “That can result in people reacting negatively,” Martel said. “Odors are becoming a nuisance, as aggressive as noise.”

SmartPad is Azrock’s method for routine floor maintenance that not only cleans the floor but also polishes the surface using traditional floor pads prepared with billions of microscopic diamonds. Instead of chemical cleaning, SmartPad is a mechanical method that reduces the use of cleaner in daily maintenance. This means a lower total cost of maintenance as the number of coats of polish can be reduced from five-to-seven to three-to-four.

Creating people-friendly spaces is also a matter of economics. When analyzing a corporation’s expense over 30 years on a building, 2% is the initial building cost, 6% is in maintenance and operations and 92% is in the people. “We not only look at color and design, but also IAQ (product and maintenance),” Martel said. “We look at floors as a system: product, adhesive and maintenance. All impact the people. If you are not attracting people to the building, you may have people who don’t want to come to work, which leads to absenteeism, which leads to a reduction in productivity.”

2.Using renewable and natural materials. Once upon a time pre-consumer was enough; now Azrock is looking to include a minimum of 10% post-consumer material into all its products. In addition, VCT is comprised of 45% limestone, a natural material of which there is no shortage.

3.Consuming fewer resources. Azrock looks at the floor as a system, which includes installation and maintenance. On the installation side, SpraySmart a spray adhesive, was developed to reduce an adhesive’s environmental impact. A typical 10,000-square-foot installation requires 56 cans of SpraySmart weighing 74 pounds and generating 5 pounds of CO2 from freight vs. the typical 12 buckets of traditional adhesive weighting 480 pounds and generating 33 pounds of CO2 in freight. “We are constantly trying to reduce the weight of the product - not just in manufacturing but in the adhesives, polishes and strippers,” Martel said.

In addition, SpraySmart provides the end user with immediate occupancy of the space. There’s less odor, contains low VOCs (one of the only Floorscore-certified adhesives), and the propellant is safe, even for asthma users.

4.ReUse: Reclaiming products at the end of their lives. Tarkett is the only resilient flooring manufacturer in North America that recycles internally everything from standard VCT to premium tile. “We do it from A to Z,” said Gilles de Beaumont, president of Tarkett’s commercial division. “We even do our own sorting.”

Tarkett recycles not only its own tile but its competitors’ as well after it is inspected. “We check for asbestos, heavy metal and the type of adhesive that was used in the initial installation,” de Beaumont said. “For example, a cut-back adhesive, which was used from the 1950s to 1990s, is no longer legal. That adhesive was chemically charged as opposed to latex based, which is where the industry has gone. It also was black, which contaminates the process.”

Today Azrock reclaims VCT for customers who want to build a relationship, de Beaumont said, meaning those who are replacing that tile with an Azrock product. “Landfill costs are prohibitive — you may have to rent a 20-foot container, pay freight to the landfill and then a tipping fee at the landfill. That can be more expensive than sending the tile back to us.”

End users are seeing the value in the program. Academy, a sports chain store in Texas, over the last two years has recycled about 300,000 pounds of VCT. “It’s a customer we gained because it was part of their mission — recycle as much construction material as possible when they renovate a store,” Martel said.

Azrock’s three-pronged portfolio
Asset, Advance and Achieve are Azrock’s answer to other companies’ good/better/best product lineup. The trinity is grouped not only by product type but also features and benefits. And each category offers the potential to earn LEED points by improving the environmental performance of a building.

Asset is Azrock’s entry-level, standard VCT formulation. But unlike competing products, Asset offers 20% pre-consumer content and a minimum 10% postconsumer content that is third-party certified by NSF. What’s more, Asset can be installed using Azrock’s SpraySmart adhesive and maintained with the proprietary SmartPad system. Installations using SpraySmart come with a limited 5-year moisture warranty.

“So when you look at sustainability, it’s a nice, well-rounded story on lifecycle cost, moisture and recycled materials,” said Diane Martel, Tarkett’s vice president, environmental planning and strategy.

Advance is what Azrock refers to as vinyl enhanced tile, or its premium VCT. The environmental story here is Advance’s polyurethane coat, which greatly simplifies the initial maintenance procedure and reduces the amount of additional coats of wax that needs to be applied prior during installation. “Only have two coats of wax need be applied,” Martel said. “Then it’s just a spray buff maintenance. So on the sustainability side, Advance offers a lower lifecycle cost and a 90% reduction of polish and stripper.”

Gilles de Beaumont, president of Tarkett’s commercial division, added that the initial cost may be 35% higher than Asset, but the return on investment is realized within a year when maintenance is factored in. And a 10-year warranty on moisture is attached when installed using SpraySmart.

“Unlike our competitors’ [step-up] product, our premium category is manufactured on a press line rather than calendar roll,” he said. “This does not elongate the chips so the product is non-directional. Monolithic facilitates the installation process.”

Achieve is Azrock’s solid vinyl tile. Maintenance is minimized via a dry buffing program that requires no wax — in other words, a 100% reduction of polish and strippers that significantly lowers life cycle cost. Achieve offers a 10-year warranty on moisture, wear and manufacturing when installed using SpraySmart adhesive. “For the end user, you are really looking at the ROI of this product,” de Beaumont said.