i4F enters into partnership with HMTX for SRP™ flooring circularity technology

• i4F obtains exclusive rights to license patent pending TPU and rigid core formula
• 2 plastic bottles (PET) upcycled into each square foot of flooring
• Designed for circularity: Re-use, Refurbish, or Recycle
• On show at THE GREEN COLLECTION area at DOMOTEX

DOMOTEX Hall 020, Booth B38, HANNOVER, GERMANY – i4F, a group of companies providing patents and technologies to the flooring industry, today announced it has entered into a strategic patent partnership with HMTX Industries, LLC – a global flooring company and leading innovator in flooring technologies. As a result of the agreement, i4F has secured exclusive rights to license HMTX’s SRP™ rigid core TPU flooring technology to third-party decorative panel manufacturers. The rights cover the technology and know-how to enable manufacturers to produce, offer and sell SRP flooring products. i4F’s ultimate goal is to position SRP™ products as the market standard for decorative floor covering panels.

SRP™ Rigid Core TPU flooring is a patent pending recyclable technology developed as an environmentally conscious solution to alleviate the challenge of single-use plastics developed by HMTX Industries, in partnership with Huntsman.

Two plastic bottles* (PET) are upcycled into each square foot of SRP flooring, with a cross-linked polyurethane top layer, thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) core layer, and a cross-linked foam back layer. Ultimately, the product will be transformed to an engineered thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) which will be the foundation of a single polymer construction. In a first for the flooring industry, and after a lifetime of use and reuse, SRP™ TPU rigid core flooring is designed to be recovered and remade into new SRP™ TPU flooring with the exact same characteristics: forged from the ground up for a circular economy.

SRP™ flooring products are initially made with more than 20 PET water bottles per square meter of flooring, helping to reduce the amount of waste plastics in the environment. The planks and tiles are engineered to be recycled into new SRP™ flooring when they reach their end-of-life while maintaining product performance and quality. 

SRP™ rigid core TPU flooring is on show at i4F’s booth as well as in THE GREEN COLLECTION area at DOMOTEX, the technology has also been nominated for a prestigious GREEN COLLECTION Award, in the Eco-friendly Products category.

CEO of HMTX Industries, Harlan Stone comments, “As one of our long-standing and respected partners, collaborating with i4F on this new technology was the obvious choice. We not only have a shared vision of how the future of global flooring should look but continue to energize each other to make things happen! With SRP rigid core TPU flooring, now the very flooring you walk on can live again. It’s a first real attempt at flooring circularity. We took the ordinary and made it extraordinary with layer upon layer of innovation.”

John Rietveldt, i4F CEO says, “We are more than proud to partner with HMTX on this ground-breaking technology.  Together, we are redefining the standards for fully sustainable flooring. SRP rigid core TPU flooring is a spectacular example of flooring circularity in action as it delivers a renewable technology that relives again and again. This means that flooring may never need to go to a landfill. Instead, it finds new life and evolves for a new generation.”