Dalsouple Rubber Flooring

It's a common misconception among specifiers that modern rubber flooring is a 'natural' product. In fact, virtually all the rubber flooring on the market today is made from synthetic SBR, sometimes know as 'industrial rubber,' a petrochemical by product. In environmental terms, synthetic rubber compares quite favourably with its main competitors - PVC, and even linoleum. But with sustainability now high on the design agenda, Dalsouple has decided it's time to take a quantum leap in improving the environmental profile of its products, simply by going 'back to nature'.

Dalsouple has been a specialist manufacturer of rubber products since the 1940s. In these early days, all production used natural rubber. However, in the 1960s, Dalsouple gradually moved away from natural rubber to synthetic rubber alternatives. Given the simpler manufacturing processes of the time, SBR was cheaper, easier to process and offered more consistency and uniformity of colour.

Cost effectiveness and product quality are critical commercial ingredients, but in the new design environment they are not enough. Our priorities as consumers, specifiers and manufacturers are changing. Hence ‘DalNaturel’, the new generation natural rubber floorcovering from Dalsouple...more