In October 2020, Pervanovo Invest AB, the parent company of the group of companies that includes Välinge Innovation and Bjelin, made the decision to invest in a high-tech, fully-integrated and automated production facility in Croatia for the manufacture of cured wooden floors on a large scale for a global market.
The new Ogulin 2 factory is being built next to the parquet flooring factory Ogulin 1 in the city of Ogulin, Croatia. The factory’s production volume will gradually increase from 2023 and by the time Ogulin 2 comes fully on stream in 2027, it will be the world’s largest wooden flooring factory with a production capacity of more than 20 million square metres of flooring per year. The total annual volume of flooring production at Viken and Ogulin 2 will then be 30 million square metres.
Ogulin 2 factory is being built next to the parquet flooring factory Ogulin 1 in the city of Ogulin, Croatia. Image credit: Bjelin
The new factory is being built on a 330 000 square metre site that is located along the motorway between Zagreb and Split. The factory’s total floor area is 100 000 square metres, and investments in land, buildings, installations and machinery are valued at EUR200-million (CAPEX). The investment is largely financed through equity.
In the high-tech and automated factory Ogulin 2, flooring will be manufactured from wood powder, surface treatments and core material. The raw material required for production is to a large extent derived from wood waste from Bjelin’s other factories in Ogulin, Bjelovar and Otok, all in Croatia. Pressing, profiling, preparation of surfaces and the final packaging of the floors takes place in automated production processes that were also developed by Välinge Innovation.
To match the investments in production capacity, the group will make strategic investments in the sales organisation and marketing in Europe, the USA and Asia to strengthen its brands globally.
“I am very pleased that after ten years of strong focus and high development costs, we are ready to scale up wood powder-based production and introduce the next generation of wooden floors – a cured wood, which is both cost-efficient and environmentally friendly to produce. The result has been an enormously positive response from the markets, historically on a par with the three-layer parquet floor launched in 1945 through the Swedish companies Kährs and Tarkett.
“The success has given us the confidence to make this ground-breaking investment in Croatia, where we have access to high-quality oak forests combined with skilled employees,” says Darko Pervan, CEO, Pervanovo Invest AB. We are delighted that our owners are prepared to make such a powerful investment in Woodura technology. We hope that the success of our sister company and our main partner Bjelin, which markets and sells the flooring, will encourage others to sign a licence for this innovative technology,” says Niclas Håkansson, CEO, Välinge Innovation.
