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You are here:Guest Speakers»Noël Lallemand and Neel Verstappen (Nobel Flooring -NL)
Wednesday, 05 April 2023 06:08

Noël Lallemand and Neel Verstappen (Nobel Flooring -NL)

Special "Who produces extra long and wide wooden floors : (solid wood and multilayer)?"

Floor Forum International N° 129, March 2023

‘Niche market where customised and in-house work make a difference.’
When we talk about extra long and wide wooden floors, we automatically mention firms which are real wood specialists. We found such a firm in Minderhout (Belgium): Nobel Flooring. Nobel Flooring makes exceptional lengths in two and three-layer parquet up to 15 metres. You won’t find planks longer than that on the market and they aim to stress that fact during the BAU trade fair in Munich.
Nobel Flooring didn’t just emerge from nowhere. This family business has a thing about wood, plus a history going back to 1890 when clockmaker Piet Schrauwen started to make wooden cupboards for clocks. He created something unique for each client out of a love for wood. Six generations later, the family still does this under the leadership of business managers Johan Schrauwen and Petra Lievens. Nobel Flooring deals purely in customised work ranging from parquet floors to staircases inclusive.

XXL is a relatively recent story
The family business specialises in extra long and wide parquet, something which has taken off particularly in the last four years. Noël Lallemand, who covers mainly exports, and Neel Verstappen, the man behind sales in Belgium and the Netherlands who contacts mainly architects, told us more.
Noël Lallemand begins: ‘We’re a real production company, which makes customised floorboards. Over the last 13 years, we’ve concentrated mainly on two-layer floors, although our range does also include three-layer floors. Over the last four years, there’s been more focus mainly on the XXL size, which has become vitally important to us.’
Neel Verstappen explains: ‘This emphasis on XXL is no coincidence. Indeed, this sort of parquet is often tailor-made and in Belgium and the Netherlands it’s mainly architects and interior architects who prefer bigger sizes. What we discovered was that the market was being swamped with parquet, but that there was some scope to launch more exclusive products on the market. If you go longer and wider, you stand out from most other suppliers and that’s very important to architects.’

Residential and commercial
Obviously, we want to know why the trend towards extra long and wide is continuing. And where do you find this most? Is this a product which is purchased purely for commercial projects or do we also find it in residential applications? Are there specific wood sorts which are more popular than others?
‘You find long and wide parquet in both worlds,’ says Neel Verstappen. ‘In commercial use, you see it emerge often in exclusive applications, think, for instance, of exclusive showrooms or restaurants.’
‘What you have to remember is that it’s always tailored work, and that’s also why we saw everything ourselves, starting with the trunk itself. The biggest demand is for oak, but sometimes people want larch or, in particular, douglas. In Minderhout we make really nice lengths and widths, a maximum of up to 15 metres long and 55 to 60cm wide. We saw those 15 metres into strips on site and sandpaper the wood and glue it. This all-in-one concept is ideal also for working towards the fitting.’
‘It’s important to mention that those 15 metres are in engineered parquet. For solid wood 10 metres is very long,’ Noël Lallemand adds. ‘After all, the composite narrative does give us lots of advantages. The wood no longer moves and floor heating and cooling are not a problem. We do lots of projects with extra long and wide parquet, such as a project in Paris where floorboards of 9.90 metres are being fitted in a private dwelling. This has been prescribed by a local architect.’

A niche world
The participation in BAU illustrates how Nobel Flooring is striving to make its name more widely known. With long and wide floorboards it’s mainly about developing contacts with clients who are looking for special items. In this case we’re talking mainly about purchasers and interior designers and architects.
‘We’re active in a very small world,’ Neel Verstappen nods in agreement. ‘Thanks to trade fairs, we reach the bigger firms of architects and we’re becoming more widely known worldwide. Gradually, you notice that people who have worked with us now recommend us.’
‘The point is that we do more than just sell parquet, we sell a story,’ Noël Lallemand continues. ‘The story starts with the trunks and doesn’t end until the finished end product. We don’t outsource any work, and everything is done internally on a small scale, but in an extremely professional manner. Internationally, we have an advantage here: Belgium has an exceptionally good name in this market segment and that means that we can literally export our products worldwide, and there’s demand from Australia, Mexico, the USA, Dubai, and even China.’
‘The most important thing is that you not only provide customised work, but you’re also responsible for the finish,’ Neel Verstappen adds. ‘We don’t supply a standard product, not even in terms of colour. Send us some samples and we finish with our own colours, which we continue to expand. We do this on our own colouring line, which is 35 metres long. We get everything ready for export, so it’s no longer necessary to sandpaper or apply colour. Supplying products which are ready for fitting gives us an exceptionally great advantage, since you never achieve the same mechanical strength if you finish on site. This means that you can also fit our XXL floorboards in kitchens or bathrooms.’

Expert fitting
During the discussion it becomes clear that Nobel Flooring can also do the fitting. They operate mainly in Belgium and the Netherlands, but also sometimes in France and Luxembourg.
‘We work together with a network of dealers such as interior companies, parquet companies, and such like. They’re all professionals who are assisted by the Nobel Flooring technical team. Clients don’t have to do the fitting and that’s a major asset,’ Noël Lallemand explains.
Obviously, we also want to know the cost. How much more expensive is this than classic parquet?
‘You find a nice parquet floor for any budget. It all depends on the choice of sorting, the size of plank, and the finishes,’ Neel Verstappen concludes. ‘We like to meet clients in our showroom so that we can work out a detailed quotation for them.’