High-end, exotic wood flooring manufacturer Patagonia credits Lord Corp, a global leader in coatings technology for the surfaces, panels, and flooring industries, with its ability to offer a 25-year guarantee for its products.

Located in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Patagonia manufactures and distributes a wide variety of prefinished solid wood flooring products to Europe, North America, and South Africa. According to its representatives, the company decided to differentiate itself from the competition by offering a 25-year guarantee, recognizing that having confidence in the finishing process was critical to success with this offer.

Patagonia's website identifies the company's corporate passion as to combine the beauty and natural warmth of wood with hi-tech industrial processes. As a result of its meticulous selection and care of wood, Patagonia guarantees the initial high quality level of its floors. However, using a coating to protect its products and ensure that this quality is maintained throughout the life of the warranty is a necessity.

To that end, in 2003 Patagonia began exploring options with Alejandro Scavuzzo, Lord Corp's technical sales manager for South America. Lord's line of wood coatings is built on more than three decades of developing, manufacturing, and distributing ultraviolet (UV) curable coatings for resilient and vinyl flooring, including 15 patents earned for a variety of products ranging from stain and scratch resistance to flexible, non-yellowing, and other coatings. Lord is the largest supplier of coatings for vinyl flooring in the Americas.

The first step was to study Patagonia's production line, selecting Lord coatings that were optimal for its equipment, as well as line speeds and desired performance specifications. Then, Lord tested the performance of its wood coatings on Patagonia's line in order to determine the optimal combination of products.

According to Scavuzzo, the optimal product line for Patagonia was identified as Lord Corp's High Performance Coatings (HPC). Typically applied as multilayer systems by roller coating technology and cured by UV energy, the coatings are either micro- and/or nano-particle modified acrylated resins, which yield extreme hardness, resulting in high mechanical resistance to scratch, impact, and abrasion. Easy to handle and available in practically any color, the decor, gloss, or surface quality can be easily adjusted during the production process to create the desired look, and the waterborne or 100% solid UV coatings are environmentally friendly.

The trials allowed Lord Corp not only to determine the best products, but also to fine-tune the process line. For example, by changing the position of the sealers, Lord and Patagonia were able to modify the leveling, resulting in the use of less product per square meter.

In addition to testing the products on Patagonia's line, testing was conducted at Lord Corp's state-of-the-art research and development lab in North Carolina. Several resistance tests were conducted on the floors, and the results validated the 25-year warranty. The excellent abrasion resistance test results on Lord Corp's coatings allow Patagonia to fulfill the demands of the American and European market.

"The advantages of Lord HPC include optimal protection of wooden surfaces at minimal cost while preserving the finished product's reparability as compared to other finishing technologies," said Scavuzzo. "Offset printing and lacquer finish technology have grown in market acceptance and serve as economical and durable solutions for today's flooring OEMs. By integrating Lord Corp's coatings, Patagonia benefits from reduced coating cost per square meter, savings on sandpaper because of good leveling, as well as a finished product with a remarkable resistance to scratch and abrasion that meets both the European and American market demand."

Patagonia concurs, and started using the coatings exclusively after seeing the performance, citing ease of application and savings in both time and money as key reasons for this decision. As for Patagonia's decision to differentiate from the competition with a 25-year guarantee, sales are expected to grow approximately 30% this year. And, the company credits Lord Corp's products as part of this growth.