Employees of Intercarpet in Aalten, the Netherlands, were informed on the final day before their summer break, that the company has filed for bankruptcy.

The carpet company has a history of tufting synthetic turf carpets on behalf of international players in outdoor sports surfaces as well as landscaping industries.

Intercarpet subsidiary Hartex, which has a synthetic turf yarn producing plant in Aalten, is likely to resume business, as a potential buyer has shown interest in taking over the facility. On face value, it appears that the bankruptcy has solely been caused by Intercarpet.

Investment in coating facility

Earlier this year, Intercarpet received a grant from Participatiefonds Oost NL to develop a more sustainable solution for coating the backings of its synthetic turf carpets.

The new solution attaches a hotmelt foil to the carpet backing, which is melted electronically. Intercarpet claimed that, by replacing the conventional latex drying oven by an electrical solution that uses infrared ovens instead of gas-fed ovens, it would save 343 tonnes of CO2.

Using a gas-fed oven to dry the latex requires one cubic metre of gas for every square metre of turf. At a cost of EUR 0.07/sqm for the gas, with the overall coating cost being EUR 0.13/sqm, it is clear that the grant and the total investment in the new coating facility would have saved Intercarpet a significant amount of money.