Development overview of plastic flooring industry

1. Overview of plastic vinyl flooring industry. 

Plastic floor is a decoration material made of PVC resin powder, plasticizer, stone powder and other raw materials, formed after the process of extrusion, hot pressing, tempering, filming and so on. Plastic vinyl floor originated in Europe, the early 30s of the last century, the United States first began to produce the plastic vinyl floor, and Europe and the United States also successfully improved the ratio of PVC tree powder, plasticizer and other auxiliary agent in 1970s and 1980s to further improve the functional characteristics of plastic vinyl floor,making it rapidly develop in Europe and the United States and other countries and regions, and widely used in household, hospital, school, office, supermarket, commercial places and other places.In addition, with the continuous advancement of petrochemical and polymer materials research and the continuous improvement and upgrading of PVC flooring embossment and other production processes, new products such as imitation stone, imitation wood, imitation carpet and so on have come into being and the relevant industrial chain has been constantly improved.Since the beginning of the 21st century, the global industrial design technology has made continuous progress. The new technology and new design represented by suspension process structure and lock process structure have developed rapidly, which has solved the problems of complicated floor installation process and high installation cost.

Plastic vinyl flooring was introduced into China in the 1980s. China's PVC flooring enterprises mainly based on production, products to export. After more than 30 years of development, domestic PVC floor manufacturing industry have been greatly improved in the production technology and product design. At present, China is the world's largest PVC floor production base. In the future, as the PVC floor products continue to appear in various fields of application advantages, the recognition of users of PVC plastic floor is constantly enhanced, domestic market demand will continue to rise, PVC floor manufacturing industry has a great potential for development.

2. Characteristics of PVC flooring products

Compared with traditional carpet, ceramic tile, marble floor, wood floor and composite floor, PVC plastic floor has the following main features: 

(1) PVC floor is environmentally friendly, non-toxic and recyclable

PVC plastic floor is the floor decoration material that is produced with polyvinyl chloride as raw material.Polyvinyl chloride has been widely used in daily life as an environmentally friendly and non-toxic material.For example, in the field of food and medical treatment with extremely high environmental protection requirements, the environmental protection characteristics of PVC products (tableware, medical infusion bag, etc.) have been strictly verified.The application of PVC plastic floor in the floor field, effectively solve the problem of traditional wood floor  in the production, installation and use of the existing formaldehyde and other harmful substances volatile hidden danger, its environmental performance has obvious advantages.On the other hand, PVC material is a recyclable resource through industrial synthesis. In the production process and when the replacement expires, the waste products can be recycled and reused.In today's era emphasizing the concept of sustainable development, new materials and new energy emerge in endlessly, PVC floor is a recyclable floor decoration material, which is of great significance to protect the earth's natural resources and ecological environment.

(2) The high wear-resistant strength and anti-slip property make the PVC floor have the advantages of long service life and high safety performance

PVC floor surface has the transparent wear-resisting layer of a special processing, its wear-resisting revolution is generally higher than the traditional ground material that includes liminate floor.The strong wear-resisting layer with special treatment on the surface fully guarantees the excellent wear-resisting performance of ground material, thus prolonging the service life of PVC floor. The floor of 0.55mm thickness of wear- layer on the surface can be use for more than 20 years under normal circumstance, the floor of 0.7mm thickness of wear-resisting layer is enough to use 25 years above. Accordingly, in the public place such as the hospital school, office building, bazaar, supermarket, conveyance with larger person flow, PVC plastic floor is more and more popular. In addition, compare with common ground material, the wear-resisting layer of PVC floor has special characteristic of anti-slippery, which will become stronger under the circumstance of meeting water. Therefore, PVC plastic floor have a wider range of applications in the public places such as airports, hospitals, kindergartens, schools of high security requirements.

(3) PVC plastic floor has outstanding thermal conductivity and has the advantage of wide application area

As consumptive demand upgrades ceaselessly, Floor heating products are becoming popular, the choice of consumer to floor product considers thermal conductivity more and more in order to satisfy domestic outfit floor heating environment.For traditional solid wood geothermal floor, there is expansion instability at high temperature and possibility of releasing formaldehyde at high temperature.And PVC floor has good heat conduction property and small coefficient of thermal expansion .In Europe and the United States and Japan and South Korea and other countries and regions, PVC floor has become an important product of floor of heating thermal conductivity. In the future, with the improvement of the market recognition of PVC floor of thermal conductivity, the domestic geothermal floor market has a broad market space.

(4) The fire retardant standard of PVC floor is higher, moisture resistance is obvious.

PVC plastic flooring products are difficult to burn and can prevent burning to a certain extent. According to the "classification of combustion performance of building materials and products" GB8624-2012 standard, its fire protection index can reach class B1 (refractory materials). The smoke produced by the high standard PVC plastic floor will not produce asphyxiating toxic and harmful gas when it is ignited and will not harm the human body.In addition, the main composition of PVC floor is vinyl resin, which has no hydrophilic characteristic.Accordingly, PVC floor won't be affected with damp easily or produce mildew in the environment of high humidity .   

(5) PVC floor has anti-impact effect and sound absorption effect

PVC floor has a certain anti-impact effect and has a certain ability to restore impact from damage to heavy objects .PVC plastic floor can reduce the harm that the ground brings to human body to a certain degree, can disperse the impact to foot ministry.In addition, compared with traditional ground decoration materials, plastic floor has a good sound-absorbing effect, in the place has need for quiet environment such as hospital ward, school library, lecture hall, theater and other places, PVC plastic floor are widely used.