Awarded The Flooring Show’s coveted Sustainability Award for 2025, Tarkett’s third outing at the exhibition was focused both on environmental responsibility and true technological innovation. “Everything we do has a sustainability element,” explains Steve Urwin, Marketing Manager at Tarkett UK, with genuine circular recycling being the company’s major differentiator. This means rather than downcycling – i.e. a floor being processed and turned into simpler products such as traffic cones – Tarkett’s products can be fully recycled and turned into new flooring after their original lifespan is over.
The Circular Collection includes carpet tiles, LVT, vinyl and linoleum ranges, all of which meet a strict set of criteria to be determined “Closed-Loop” recyclable. This means the products can be collected through Tarkett’s ReStart collection programme, transported to one of the company’s recycling facilities and finally processed into raw materials for new Tarkett floors.
This process is simpler, Steve says, with the company’s loose-lay products, and it’s this segment the company expanded during the 2025 show with its new Inspiration Rigid Click range. “Around the country there’s a lot of demand for this type of product. It’s unique in that it has a plank element to the collection, a rigid herringbone, and also an inline grout ceramic tile.” The inline grout effect offers particular benefit for the installer, making it far easier to lay without having to line up an inlay. “You just click it together and it can never be out of line, because it’s printed onto the tile, but it looks extremely authentic,” Steve explains.
Across a wide range of its products, Tarkett also distinguishes itself from the competition with true digital printing. “Whether it’s laminate or LVT, it’s a printed product,” says Steve. It’s this area where the scale of Tarkett’s global operations offers even greater benefits, as the company is able to take the real hardwood floors it produces in Sweden and digitally replicate those patterns in all their complexity and beauty. “That means, instead of having a three or four metre pattern repeat, like a traditionally analogue-printed floor would have, this is a 12sqm repeat, which enables us to be much more daring with our patterns.”
Tarkett’s entry to the UK retail market has been a considered one. Although the company is vast, with a €3bn turnover and a staggering 1.3m metres of flooring manufactured and sold every day, the company wasn’t content to pour investment into such a mature sector without a unique offering to the market. “In the UK, our emphasis has traditionally been more on commercial flooring.” Steve says, “It was only when we started having true USPs, like our digital printing, our European manufacturing and our super matt surface,” that the retailers got it and started to adopt it.”
Having exhibited at The Flooring Show for the first time three years ago, Tarkett’s initial outing was met with a lot of buzz. “Happy to say that three years later, we still get that response,” Steve tells The Stocklists.
www.tarkett.co.uk
Please click to view more articles about
> Tarkett <