FINSA, Financiera Maderera SA, company founded in 1931, a world reference in the manufacture of products derived from wood, achieves the Cradle to Cradle Certified™ award at Bronze level for its wooden boards. Pioneer in the manufacture of chipboard and MDF in the Iberian Peninsula, FINSA seeks to go further by evaluating its best-selling product through the most demanding an internationally recognized program in health and cyclability of products.Eco Intelligent Growth (EIG) has worked together with FINSA for a year to achieve this ambitious goal.

FINSA is aware of the link that its activity has with nature and therefore one of its main concerns is to ensure responsible management of the wood used in its products. It has always worked to source woods of controlled and responsible origin, preferring those from PEFC and FSC forests. All its production comes from the surroundings near the factories, also taking advantage of the remains and remnants of neighboring producers.

The use of energy is another relevant chapter. Through cogeneration systems, FINSA has managed to optimize energy demand at its facilities to the maximum.

Cradle to Cradle and Circular Economy

In April 2018 FINSA began its collaboration with Eco Intelligent Growth (EIG), with the aim of incorporating the Cradle to Cradle principles and the Circular Economy. FINSA boards have innumerable applications, so a positive change in their health and cyclability qualities facilitates an exponential change. Aware of this, FINSA decides to opt for the most demanding program at the level of product evaluation for the Circular Economy.

Although the company already has Environmental Product Declarations, the European Ecolabel and complies with ISO standards, the health and cyclability of the panels was not fully considered.

FINSA and EIG worked for a year to identify product components by diving throughout the supply chain to obtain Cradle to Cradle Certified Bronze for a range of 5 families of bare board manufactured in 3 of their 7 factories.

 

Further achievements

The C2C Circular Economy framework offers benefits for people, nature and the economy. FINSA discovered this in its first year working with C2C and decides to move forward widening the scope of the works with the goal of assessing all its production step by step.

Therefore, it continues working in this direction and at the beginning of 2020 the first certification is expanded with the following significant achievements:

• Inclusion of chipboard and MDF boards.
• Inclusion of boards in their bare finish and their finish with melamine coating.
• Inclusion of the 7 FINSA factories: FINSA SANTIAGO, FINSA PADRON, FINSA CELLA, FINSA FIBRANOR, FINSA OREMBER (SP); FINSA FRANCE (FR); LUSO FINSA (PT).
• Inclusion of the 13 families of wood board from FINSA’s catalog: Standard, fire retardant, waterproof, EZ, Superpan P5, EZ flame retardant, EZ waterproof, NAF, Exterior NAF and Fibracolour MDF.
• Inclusion of a total of 964 product references.

 

Finsa and the 5 quality categories of C2C Certified™

Cradle to Cradle Certified ™ assesses products according to 5 quality categories. These are FINSA’s main achievements in each of them:

Material Health: The inclusion of the melamine paper finish has been a significant achievement due to the lack of transparency in this sector with a fierce competition. A minimum of 84% by weight of the substances present has been identified and the objective of searching for alternatives to the identified problematic substances has been set.

Material Reutilization: FINSA’s wooden boards are 100% recyclable. In addition, the company has its own recycling system that allows wood waste from customers or local recycling companies that could not be reused before, to be reintroduced into FINSA’S production cycle.

Renewable Energy: FINSA factories are powered with energy from renewable sources  and the production processes are optimized taking advantage of the energy from cogeneration.

 

Water Stewardship: An audit of the water use of the 7 FINSA plants has been carried out, as well as the use of water in a specific area of ​​their locations.

 

Social Fairness: The company and its direct suppliers have carried out an internal self-assessment based on the Social Hotspot Database and B CORP..