At the recent Good Design Awards, Noveco Surfaces was awarded a Best in Class award in the Product: Hardware & Building category.
TKBB spoke to Ryan Fritsch, CEO of Noveco Surfaces, about what this award means for this relatively young business.
“Winning an award of this size/prestige is incredibly exciting for us and helps bolster our credibility in the market of balancing sustainable, responsible manufacturing while also being design-forward,” he says. “As the design community is a significant stakeholder of ours, having this in our list of achievements, particularly in such a strong category in the awards, shows we are and will continue to become a more prominent organisation within the surfaces industry”.
Noveco Surfaces is an Australian-owned and -operated sustainable surfaces manufacturer, based in NSW. All its surfaces are entirely crystalline silica free and are made from up to 80% recycled materials. At the end of their lifetime, all products are 100% recyclable.
Ryan explains that the original concept came from a research project that was looking into waste glass as a problem waste material in Australia and investigating viable pathways for its use. Several years into this research, the team realised this waste product created the foundation for a high-quality surface product, first in the tile industry but, now with the ban on engineered stone, also as a replacement benchtop surface. “We are in the process of setting up a new factory to service this new segment, which we expect to be in production by December 2025 and fulfilling orders by January 2025,” adds Ryan. The new factory will provide Noveco Surfaces with 250,000sqm of production capacity per year.
The research and development into the base product was carried out over a number of years with specific trials and testing to ensure compliance with all construction and architectural Standards. It was important to the team that the newly-developed product met a number of criteria; to create a sustainable product that utilised the abundance of waste glass created, to address the health risks of products containing silica, and to create a reliable stream of product for the housing and construction industry.
For this purpose, a “micro” factory was established to test a commercially viable product before its launch to the marketplace. The success of the application for tile production provided the opportunity to expand production into benchtops, furniture, architectural elements and base construction pieces. “Our products aren’t just surfaces,” explains Ryan. “They’re crystalline silica-free statements of ingenuity”.
As with the development of any new product, the initial manufacturing stages have thrown up a few challenges along the way. “The fundamental step-change for the business was the transition, over several years of lab-format production, to bespoke designs for specific clients and into production at scale,” says Ryan. Ryan adds that, however frustrating, each set of challenges were essential in allowing the team to develop a high-performing circular product.
Glass for Noveco’s products is sourced as post-consumer glass but Ryan and the team are looking into expanding this to include other feed sources in 2025. “Post-consumer glass will always be the core of our supply, given the sheer volume in the Australian market that is not suitable for recycling,” explains Ryan. “When this glass is broken beyond a reasonable size it’s no longer feasible for it to be used through traditional recycling methods, in most instances. But we can”.
As production ramps up into 2025 it will be very interesting to watch the trajectory of Noveco Surfaces and see how its products are received and utilised by the design and building industry, so watch this space!
For more information visit novecosurfaces.com/
