Junckers Refurbished Floors
About Junckers
Junckers is Europe’s leading manufacturer of solid wooden parquet flooring, founded in 1930 by forester Flemming Juncker. His vision to create value from underutilized wood laid the foundation for a company now known for quality and innovation in wood flooring.
Project Introduction
In response to the significant environmental impact of the construction sector and the fact that only 1% of building materials are reused in Denmark, Junckers has launched an ambitious circularity initiative. The goal is to take responsibility for the company’s products across their full life cycle by creating a sustainable solution that reuses wooden floors without compromising on quality or warranty.
This project reflects Junckers’ ambition to aid and accelerate the circular transition within the built environment. At the core of the project is the principle of circular reuse, where old solid wood floors are recovered, refurbished, and reintroduced for use. The development of the reuse initiative has been a cross-functional effort, engaging production, procurement, sales, product management, marketing, and sustainability. Furthermore, the success of the project depends on collaboration with the upstream value chain, including developers, contractors, and demolition companies, who play a key role in sourcing post-use wood flooring.
Junckers has established three new business models to facilitate material recovery and reuse, depending on the needs and conditions of the stakeholder:
- Closed Loop: Floors are refurbished and reinstalled in the same project.
- Semi-Closed Loop: Floors are reused in another project by the same stakeholder.
- Open Loop: Refurbished floors are resold for use in new projects.
This framework ensures that reuse becomes a practical and scalable option for both public and private construction projects.
Potential future developments
The initiative is timely and aligned with new climate calculation principles in Denmark that took effect at the start of the year, setting the climate impact of reused building materials at 0 kg CO₂. This regulatory change aims to improve the attractiveness of reused materials.
However, despite this incentive, the building industry still perceives a high economic risk in the use of reclaimed materials. To mitigate this, Junckers emphasizes quality assurance and extended warranty, ensuring that reused floors match the performance standards of new ones. The concept therefore allows architects to incorporate reused flooring into their projects without developers or contractors having to fear financial risk from using reused materials while the end users benefit from environmentally friendly floors that still maintain the high quality and long lifespan that Junckers is known for.
We also know that this is a process which requires careful attention to several factors to ensure quality, functionality, and safety in the finished project. Therefore, Junckers offers assistance throughout the entire process to ensure a smooth workflow and optimal utilization of the reused flooring.
We have demonstrated that it is possible to achieve circularity with the same quality and warranty and that the potential is significant. We estimate that approximately 30,000,000 m² of Junckers parquet flooring exists in Denmark alone, which could be given new life.
Current contribution
The initiative is part of the EU TIMBERHAUS project which aims to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the construction sector, which is responsible for 40% of global CO2 emissions, 50% of all extracted materials, and 35% of waste generated.
TIMBERHAUS seeks to accelerate the uptake of wood in construction by harnessing the potential of currently under-used hardwood species and post-consumer wood to create sustainable, high-performance construction products and designs, and enable more efficient use of forest resources, this fits right into Junckers way of operating since our founding in 1930.
Solid wooden floors, being 100% natural and renewable, have natural bioeconomic value and contributes significantly to the EU bioeconomy by extending the lifecycle of bio-based materials. By recovering, processing, and reintroducing refurbished floors into the market, Junckers’ initiative helps close material loops within the construction sector, which is one of the EU’s most resource-intensive industries. Avoiding the need for harvesting, processing, and transporting virgin timber. This translates to reduced pressure on forests and ecosystems, a smaller carbon footprint, and less construction waste.
