Concrete

Check out Concrete

The Material

Concrete is a melamine faced chipboard. More information about the manufacture and background of MFC can be found by following the link to our MFC Material page. The board is composed of melamine resin impregnated paper sandwiching a chipboard core. In the case of Concrete a texture is applied to the board during manufacture and an example of the texture is shown above. We classify the texture of this board as Heavy meaning you would be not be able to easily write on it, if at all, however it is more than fit for purpose as a desk material.

For the user this means a tough, heat and stain resistant surface which is durable and capable of withstanding an everyday home office or indeed commercial office environment. MFC is widely used in the furniture industry for kitchens, office furniture, cabinetry and restaurant and hotel fit-out so it is a proven and safe material.

How do you seal the edges?

The edges are sealed by applying an edgeband. This is a 2mm thick plastic (ABS) strip along all four sides of the chipboard edge using a complex machine called an edgebander. We use an advanced hot air technology to glue our edgeband to the edge after which it is automatically trimmed, scraped, corner rounded, buffed and cleaned by the machine to provide a board ready for quality inspection.

The hot air system we use leaves an almost invisible gap between the board and the edging meaning it is spill resistant and looks more aesthetically pleasing.

More about this can be found on our MFC material page.

Care and attention

MFC desk-tops are easy to maintain. They can be cleaned with normal, everyday detergent sprays you would use in your kitchen. Other than that there is nothing to do. In terms of durability they wil not wear through. The only danger is dropping something on the desk-top. The melamine resin is hard and thus the surface can be cracked and penetrated. However it would take a heavy sharp object being dropped for 50cm or so to do damage.

Again more can be found on our MFC material page.

Is it good for the environment?

Yes when compared to solid timber and especially compared to MDF. We purchase our MFC from the two best European producers and they use only managed forestry sources. One uses a proportion of recycled material and the other uses virgin woodchip. One of the main environmental impacts is shipping and we try to minimise shipping distances by taking larger loads less frequently. At the end of it's long life an MFC top can be re-cycled as the ABS plastic can be broken down with the top.

Both our suppliers are members of the Forest Stewardship Council and manage their wood supplies accordingly. Both have ownership of their own forests.

Both our suppliers are ISO14001 certified and have complex arrangements for wood sourcing and recycling. Both are acutely environmentally aware and thankfully have the financial resources to put in place world class systems to minimise environmental impact.