Bjelin d.o.o. — owned by Välinge majority shareholder, Pervanovo Invest AB — has begun construction of the world’s largest wood flooring factory in Ogulin, Croatia, for the production of flooring featuring Woodura® surface technology under licence from Välinge Innovation.
The new factory is located on a 330,000 m2 plot of land adjacent to the highway between Zagreb and Split and comprises 100,000 m2 of buildings. CapEx for land, machinery, and buildings is estimated to be approximately Euro 200 million.
Välinge Flooring — an own-brand flooring collection featuring Woodura® — was launched in the US in 2020 and Asia in 2021. Bjelin’s new mega-factory in Croatia will increase production and availability of the next-gen real wood floor and also allow Välinge to help their partners and licensees to develop their own Woodura®-based products.
The new factory, named ‘Ogulin 2’, is being built by Bjelin d.o.o. close to their existing ‘Ogulin 1’ parquet factory. Construction of the factory began in 2020 with the first phase scheduled to be operational by 2023 and all phases constructed and up and running in 2027. The development means the production of flooring featuring Woodura® technology will ramp up incrementally, exceeding 20 million m2 in annual capacity upon completion.
‘Ogulin 2’ will be a high-tech, highly integrated factory — with the production of wood powder and veneer taking place in-house. A new moisture-proof, environmentally friendly, wood-based core, invented by Pervanovo and Välinge, will also be produced at the new Croatian mega-facility — with the majority of wood raw material for the new core coming from wood waste from the Bjelin factories in Ogulin, Bjelovar, and Otok. Powder mixing, pressing, profiling, lacquering, and packaging at the factory will be highly automated and will also be based on production principles developed by Välinge.
Välinge Innovation’s majority shareholder, Pervanovo Invest AB are owners of both Bjelin AB in Sweden and Bjelin d.o.o. who run sawmills, veneers mills, and parquet floor manufacturing facilities in Croatia.
