The Warming Surfaces Company Partners with Laminate Producer and Construction Group To Create First Digital Warming Surface Product
Designed for use in interior surfaces, Halia digital warming surfaces help address the increasingly strict zero-emission criteria of buildings and improve health and well-being of people.
The Warming Surfaces Company, a Finnish pioneer in digital warming technology, announces its first go-to-market partnerships with Surforma, an innovative manufacturer of high-pressure laminates (HPL) for furniture and interior design, and Grupo Casais, an international construction company. The companies have unveiled the first digital warming surface product concept, an intelligent warming wall, at the Interzum trade fair in Cologne, Germany.
The Warming Surfaces Company’s ultra-thin, fast-response Halia digital warming surfaces technology is developed in response to growing needs for more energy-efficient and less material-intensive heating solutions, and to improve the well-being and health of people through enabling warm, comfortable spaces.
In March 2023, the European Parliament announced measures to increase the rate of renovations to reduce building energy consumption and carbon emissions. Currently 63% of energy consumed by EU households goes to warming living spaces. Furthermore, the building sector produces nearly 40% of all global CO2 emissions. An estimated 35 million buildings in the EU need to be renovated by 2030 to be more energy efficient.
“Governmental energy efficiency targets around the globe are accelerating the transition of the building sector to a zero-emission future,” said Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, CEO and cofounder of The Warming Surfaces Company. “There are earlier success stories in energy and material savings, like the EU ban on inefficient lighting, which in its first ten years brought individual European households up to 1,330 euros in savings. These recent decisions address energy consumption where emissions and costs are highest, namely heating. European households today consume over 40 times more energy on warming living spaces than on lighting. We are borrowing from the LED lighting playbook to deliver more energy efficiency and ease of control to heating. Our fast-response digital warming solutions make it possible to warm interior surfaces and furnishings rapidly and as easily as controlling lighting.”
The flexibility and thinness of Halia opens up numerous possibilities to design creative warming elements for living and working spaces. The heating elements in Halia digital warming surface technology are below 0.1 millimeters thick, which makes it possible to integrate them inside building materials, such as laminate floors, doors and walls, and even in furniture and interior textiles. Warming surfaces provide significant weight reductions to buildings, space savings, and more flexibility to interior design.
Radiant warmth is produced with low voltage and in real-time when and where needed, and at the desired intensity according to individual needs. This “warmth when and where needed” approach to heating reduces energy consumption and improves the health and comfort of building inhabitants.
Surforma’s Warming HPL, incorporating Halia warming technology by The Warming Surfaces Company, won the Interzum 2023 award for High Product Quality, which combines innovative aspects of material, function and design in an exemplary fashion.
“Surforma strives to be a sustainable world leader in the HPL industry. Blending heating into our products is a value-added feature that can help our customers achieve their sustainability targets and significantly improve the comfort of living,” said Miguel Nogueira, general director at Surforma. “We’re excited to see the first customer reactions to our best-in-class HPL equipped with Halia digital warming technology.”
“Sustainability and digitalization are at the heart of all key developments at Grupo Casais,” added Cristina Maia, product development coordinator at Grupo Casais. “Healthy buildings and building materials mean healthy people. In line with these objectives, we see a wide range of uses for Halia digital warming surfaces. For example, its light-weight thin form factor lends itself to modular buildings, non-stationary interior elements, as well as complex renovation sites.”
The first pilot installations are planned for fall of 2023 and the first product deliveries will be in 2024. Next, the partners plan to jointly pilot the heated high-pressure laminates in a hotel setting. The Warming Surfaces Company is looking to initiate further pilots to test out the Halia solution in different end-use cases.
About The Warming Surfaces Company Ltd.
Established in 2022 The Warming Surfaces Company is digitalizing heating for the age of sustainability, minimizing the amount of materials used in heating systems and reducing heating energy consumption. The Oulu, Finland-headquartered company brings to market an ultra-fast, ultra-thin, and lightweight digital warming technology that turns surfaces in our living environments into smart warming surfaces.
Fast response Halia digital warming technology integrates a wide range of surface materials and makes controlling warmth near real-time and as effortless as controlling lighting. Halia is a trademark of The Warming Surfaces Company Ltd. For more information, visit www.warmingsurfaces.com.
About Surforma S.A.
Surforma S.A. is a part of Sonae Group, a Portuguese multinational established in 1959, which is present in 62 countries and manages a diversified portfolio of businesses in the areas of industry, retail, financial services, technology, shopping centers and telecommunications. In 2021, the group’s turnover exceeded €8 billion. With over 60 years of innovation and leadership in the sector, and with the aim of creating its own identity and holding a prominent position in the production and distribution of laminates and compacts, SURFORMA was set up in 2018: a global brand focused essentially on the furniture, construction and decoration industries. The company operates in over 30 countries, in 5 continents. For more information, visit: www.surforma.com.
About Grupo Casais
Casais was founded on May 23, 1958, and has been expanding since then in the engineering and construction sectors. Today the Group works in the sectors of trades and industries as well as real estate and asset management. The Casais Group’s performance extends to 17 markets: Portugal, Germany, Angola, Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi and Dubai), Spain, United States of America (Texas), France, Ghana, Gibraltar, The Netherlands, Morocco, Mozambique, Qatar and the United Kingdom. In 2022, Casais Group won for the 5th time the “Construir” Award for Best Construction in Portugal and 3rd place as Best Place to Work with more than 5000 workers. In 2022, Casais Group had an aggregate turnover of more than €682M, with international markets accounting for €440M. For more information, visit casais.pt/en/.
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