STEICOunderfloor
The original one-man company now has about 2,000 employees, 150 of whom work at the head office with its own R&D department in Feldkirchen (Munich). Steico has production sites in Czarnków (Poland), Czarna Woda (Poland), Casteljaloux (France) and a site that is currently under construction in Gromadka (Poland).
We talk to Head of Business Development Ingo Spindler and Key Account Marc Van de Perre specifically about STEICOunderfloor, the special, ecological subfloor for laminate and parquet floors made from wood fibres, which is produced completely glue-free in a 'wet' process.

"Before we start, however, I must emphasise that our company occupies a special position in the market," states Ingo Spindler. "We are the only manufacturer that can offer complete systems with both structural products and insulation. The whole product is not just about production, it also involves an enormous amount of technical know-how because you always have to provide customers with the most complete information possible. In short: we bring a solution to the market that is not only very technical, but also requires maximum support for the customers.

"Ecological building also includes the floor and what is underneath," Marc Van de Perre adds. "We at Steico supply a subfloor with impact sound insulation and thermal insulation made from wood fibres for each floor construction. These are ideal for hard floor coverings with click connections, multi-layer prefinished parquet and laminate. The wood used for this comes from sustainably managed forests, with either FSC ® or PEFC ® certification."

The ideal underlay
What does an ideal underlay need to address, we want to know. And how does one achieve all that with the Steico underlay?

Ingo Spindler: "A subfloor has to be able to cope with a lot. This includes compensating for selective unevennesses, a significant reduction in impact noise, protection against breaking of the click connection, a high degree of variability due to graduated thicknesses, improvement of the noise in rooms, durability through a stable fibre structure and harmlessness to the building biology. And as Marc has already pointed out, the wood had better come from sustainably managed forests. Our underlay meets all these requirements."

"Looking at the unevenness first, the professional knows that a subfloor on which floor covering is laid is usually not perfectly smooth, but has protruding edges and corners in many places. Our underlay prevents these from touching each other, overloading the floor and pushing it upwards, which makes the installation of the floor safer. In terms of impact sound, you have to look at the sound one floor below. Here we reduce impact noise up to 21 dB, which is a very effective insulation measure at a low installation height."

Marc Van de Perre: "Thanks to the high compressive strength of 15 t/m², our STEICOunderfloor prevents thin click connections from breaking when the joints are loaded. Yet the underfloor boards are elastic enough to withstand falling objects. What's more, falling objects are cushioned and no great damage is done to the floor's surface. And to come back to the sustainable wood: because the wood we use for the production of this underlay - like all other Steico products, by the way - comes exclusively from sustainable forestry, the CO2 bound in the wood fibres remains bound in the long term, too."

Graduated thicknesses
Ingo Spindler then explains how a high level of variability is achieved through graduated thicknesses. According to him, the big advantage here is that Steico's underlay is available in various heights, respectively 3, 4, 5 and 7 mm: "This way, the floor layer can react to different height levels from room to room and create a consistently even floor surface without tripping hazards. In a world where renovation is becoming so important, this is extremely important."

"Another strength is how much the sound in the room is improved. In rooms where STEICOunderfloor is installed, the walking sound changes significantly, it sounds quieter and deeper. What happens is that the floor resonates more 'highly' and even more pleasantly."

Marc Van de Perre: "Durability through a stable fibre structure may sound complicated, but it's not. Moreover, it is very important because a raw material such as wood also derives its stability from its fibre structure. Our product has a compact fibre cross-link without any binding agents and is permanently resistant to dynamic and static loads."

"And finally, to clarify what we mean by building biology: as with many other of our products, the underlay has also been thoroughly tested for its health effects in building applications by the renowned Institut für Baubiologie in Rosenheim. We are very proud that the product was found to be completely harmless and that the institute even recommended it!”
To conclude, Marc Van de Perre points out 2 other specific underlay products in the Steico range:
- STEICOsilent+ : Wood fibre underlay boards of 10 mm thickness, with an impact sound improvement of 10 dB in ΔLlin and certified by TÜV Rheinland, which is especially important for the Dutch market.
- STEICOsilent pro: 7 mm wood-fibre subfloor boards with a hardened top layer giving the boards an extremely high compressive strength.

Building a new factory
During the conversation, it also emerged that Steico is in the process of building a new factory. Can Ingo Spindler tell us more about it?

"This will be our first factory that is being built completely from scratch, this time we are not taking over an existing plant. We bought a greenfield in Poland near the German border in 2020 and are now running our biggest investment programme ever there. Insulation materials will be produced on this site. The start-up is planned for the beginning of 2023 and the construction work is already in full swing. This is an investment of around EUR 100 million, which will significantly increase our current annual capacity of 4 million cubic metres of insulation materials, including the underlay. To put this current volume into perspective: the annual volume already corresponds to 53,000 insulated houses...".