Thomasville, N.C.—With the official grand opening of its production facility here, Unilin Flooring has joined a handful of companies who have the ability to say their laminate floors are “Made in the U.S.A.”

A little more than a year after breaking ground on the massive, 600,000-sq.-ft. facility, company executives from the U.S. and Belgium, Unilin’s worldwide headquarters, along with Mohawk Industries—which is in the process of acquiring the laminate maker—welcomed local dignitaries and distributors from across the country during a three-day celebration to mark the plant’s official opening.

Piet Huyghe, president of the U.S. division, which markets its products under the Quick-Step brand, said “Because of our success in the U.S., Unilin decided to build a state-of-the-art facility here. This plant shows not only that we are optimistic about the future success of the Quick-Step brand but committed to being a major, long-term player in the category.”

Ken Peden, vice president of sales and marketing, noted even though it has been approximately five years since Unilin entered the U.S. with Quick-Step, “it still feels like yesterday when I was running around the country showing samples and talking about how glueless laminate flooring would take over the category.

From the beginning we told our customers we were committed to both glueless technology and the U.S. market. “In 2001,” he continued, “glueless represented 6% of the segment, now look at it. Except for a few products, glueless represents the entire category.” Pointing to representatives who made up the company’s national distribution network, Peden added,

“You are the ones who helped move it to this. In fact, we as a company would not be here without the support of our distributors and retailers.” He added, Unilin has shown from the start that it wanted to be a serious player in the country and for that reason, “we started investing right away and haven’t stopped. And this is not the end of it.”

Peden is certainly telling the truth because even though the manufacturing plant is fully operational, it is actually the first phase of a five-year, $150 million construction project on a 72-acre plot of land here, that is expected to be complete by 2008.

The $80 million invested for this part resulted in a 600,000 square foot manufacturing facility consisting of four buildings—one for the impregnation equipment, one for the pressing machinery, one for the cutting, milling and packaging operations, and the last for a distribution center.

“Phase one covers everything needed to be a fully functional producer of laminate flooring,” explained Tim Tipton, director of marketing. This is actually Unilin’s third manufacturing facility in the state.

In 2001, the company acquired the Columbia Flooring plant here and a year later relocated its sales and marketing functions from St. Louis to Thomasville, to establish its current North American headquarters. Two years ago, it purchased a core board plant from Homanit about 50 miles away in Mt. Gilead.

In fact, it is the core board facility that truly makes Unilin a fully integrated company in the U.S. Though some of the capabilities in the new plant also help give the company this unique ability. Tipton noted, “we now have complete control of every aspect of laminate production—from the melamine underlayer to the floor’s top layer. Each component will be designed, manufactured and assembled in-house, working perfectly together as one.”

“This facility utilizes the most technologically advanced equipment available today,” he added. Facility Tour The first step in the manufacturing process starts at the 65,000-sq.-ft. impregnation building, which is where the backing, decorative and overlay papers are saturated with resins.

Rolls of paper are unwound and passed through a treating process before being dried in an oil-heated oven. It is then cut into 6X9-ft. sections and stacked approximately 2,000 at a time. Currently, the one impregnation line in place has an annual capacity of more than 300 million square feet.

Since three papers are being treated, it actually takes care of enough product for 100 million square feet per year, which matches the capabilities of the rest of the production process. The impregnation facility is broken into two zones with one of them being environmentally controlled in order to keep the humidity at a certain level so as not to harm the paper.

Following a number of inspections, the finished paper then moves to the 138,000-sq.-ft. press building to be meshed with a high density fiberboard. After another round of inspections, it goes to the 234,000-sq.-ft. cutting, milling and packaging facility. Here, the pressed panels go through an elaborate process of sawing and milling in order to have Unilin’s patented Uniclic glueless locking system incorporated into them.

This building also houses two floors of office space which will serve as the company’s North American headquarters for the Quick-Step sales and marketing team. After it is cut, milled and inspected, the planks are then packaged and wrapped. As with many of the plant’s operations, the packaging process is unique to the flooring industry.

“We had to think outside of the box throughout the facility,” explained Kyle Pollard, materials manager. Due to the speed at which product can be made, Unilin needed a packaging system that could handle one box per second and a pallet per minute. To achieve this, “we looked at the food industry and modified the equipment in order to get the speed we needed.”

Instead of product loaded into an already folded carton, the boxes are laid flat and upside down on a conveyer system, then planks are placed on it and the box is folded around them. After a carton is shrink-wrapped it is ready for shipping. For that it goes to the final stage, a 65,000-sq.-ft. distribution center with 14 docks, “allowing us to handle large shipping volumes with ease,” Peden said.

The second phase of the construction project will take place over the next three or so years and will afford Unilin additional capacity, something it will need as sales continue to grow at a healthy pace and with the fact it will need to feed Mohawk once the acquisition is complete.

Current plans call for the building of two structures—280,000- and 220,000-sq.-ft., respectively. When complete, the compound will house 1.1 million square feet of manufacturing, warehouse and distribution space. As for Mohawk, Jeff Lorberbaum, chairman and CEO, told distributors the company is looking forward to working with them and continuing to grow the Quick-Step brand.

“ Daltile has grown at a 15% compounded rate since we bought it,” he said, “and we are doing it with distributors like you,” adding that is the company’s plan with Unilin. “Unilin will operate as a separate business,” Lorber-baum explained.

“When we buy a company, we don’t just buy the assets, we buy the people and the people associated with Unilin are some of the best in the industry. This is the only fully integrated laminate business in the U.S. It has a strong foundation of differentiated products, innovation, patents and technology and we plan to continue that tradition.

“We will feed Unilin the necessary capital and support to grow the business,” he continued, “because we feel the laminate segment can still grow in the mid teens compounded.” Peden noted the plan is to maintain the Quick-Step brand through independent distributors as it is currently set up while, at the same time, producing different products for Mohawk to market and sell.

“They’ll be different colors and styles, it won’t be just the same product with a different name. Instead it will allow us to cover the entire spectrum of products and price points since Quick-Step has always been focused on the mid- to high-end products.”