Building Product News

13 June 2012   16:43 by Kebony ASA

Kebony wins Best Business Award for Best Innovation

Kebony ASA, the Global Cleantech 100 company, has won Best Innovation at the Best Business Awards against a strong field of highly competitive entries. The Best Business Awards are one of the UK’s highest profile awards and attracts a wide range of entries from international PLCs to small but dynamic enterprises. The Best Innovation award seeks to highlight an organisation which has identified the requirement for a new product and successfully brought it to the market.

Kebony, founded in 1997, is a cutting edge Norwegian company offering a sustainable alternative to tropical hard wood and toxic- treated wood. Through the environmentally-friendly process of ‘Kebonization’, sustainable wood species are turned into Kebony, which has comparable if not superior properties to that of tropical hardwood. This new wood has been used by a number of renowned architects, designers and constructors worldwide in applications including yacht decking, flooring, cladding, roofing and furniture.

In winning the award Kebony demonstrated that there is a new market for an environmentally-friendly, durable and aesthetic wood product. Depletion of tropical hardwood resources has become increasingly unacceptable and the need for environmentally-friendly alternatives to biocides and toxic chemicals for wood impregnation has grown as awareness increases about the damage non-sustainable products do to the environment.

At the same time, the demand for high performance and low maintenance wood materials has increased. Kebony out performs its counterparts in terms of durability, longevity and quality, and also fulfils the demand for an aesthetically pleasing wood in a variety of textures and colours.

Kebony received fantastic feedback from the judges at the Best Business Awards with one judge commenting:

“Norway-based Kebony has come up with an innovation that could slow deforestation in tropical areas...Kebony is coming up with new uses every day and it’s even talking about being used as a replacement for steel and concrete.  Who knows – it is so attractive to look at it might even be turned into works of art.”

This Best Business Award follows a large number of awards already secured by Kebony. These include the ‘fast 50 award’ from Deloitte, Global Cleantech Top 100 in 2010 and 2011, and a ‘top 25 creative European Company’ title. Kebony has also received the Nordic eco-label, the Swan, the Glass Bear for sustainable production and the Norwegian Blue Ocean Award. Other recent awards include the Exterior Wall Finishes category of Home Building and Renovating Product Excellence Awards and shortlists for the Timber Trades Journal Achievement in Sustainability and Sustain Awards Product of the Year.

Jan Terje Nielsen, Marketing Director at Kebony comments “We are delighted to have won the Best Business Award which recognises the innovative nature of the Kebony brand and success of the company”.

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