PORTUGAL – The wood-based materials manufacturer Sonae Arauco is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Innovus Decorative Products brand this year.

The anniversary kick-off took place during FIMMA-Maderalia 2022, the international trade fair for the wood and furniture industry, in Valencia.

Whether wood, fantasy or unicolours, the Innovus Collection presents a contemporary and extensive range of decors and exclusive structures, including melamine faced panels, laminates (HPL), or composite elements. The Innovus brand covers a wide range of needs in furniture, construction, and decorative interior design, for example for retail stores, public facilities, or hotels, and is distributed in around 80 countries.

“Innovus is modern, fresh and innovative”: this is how João Berger, Chief Marketing & Sales Officer of Sonae Arauco, describes the decorative brand of Sonae Arauco. Particularly noteworthy is the “exceptionally high quality of the surface textures and the international orientation of the brand”, says Berger.

Globally, Innovus was launched in 2012 under the slogan “A new way to create”. The pre-launch in Germany and the BeNeLux countries had already taken place a year earlier.

The strategic direction under the new decorative umbrella brand was continued in 2014 by launching the decorative Topan products into Innovus® Coloured MDF. One of the most significant milestones was Interzum 2017, where the joint venture between Sonae Indústria and the Arauco Group was officially announced. At the same time, Sonae Arauco introduced the two Innovus® finishes Stucco and Fusion.

The innovation cycle was moving rapidly, and, finally, a unique Innovus Collection was presented in 2019 featuring the new textures Cosmos, Flow, and Spirit and a renewal rate of 40 percent.

Today in 2022, the brand celebrates its 10th anniversary and stands out, not only with numerous new decors and modern finishes, but also with special variants that are crucial for the value-added products business, such as Fire-X (fire retardant) and Hydro-X (moisture resistance) properties, and CARB2.

“The Innovus Collection has played a crucial role in opening up new distribution channels. It has been central in getting retailers to accept the comparatively young brand full of inspiration and we have been able to steadily expand the Innovus distribution network,” says João Berger.

After 10 years of Innovus, Sonae Arauco sees itself very well positioned for one of the biggest goals and challenges: “Climate change affects and concerns us all. Carbon capture is no longer a vague idea, but a reality – an important, urgent concept on a global scale. Sonae Arauco is in the perfect position to enable this development because wood and wood-based products sequester carbon instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. Therefore, this is the most important trend that will affect our company in the coming years, and in a positive way,” Berger explains.

Sonae Arauco was responsible for retaining 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide with the products it placed on the market in 2021. In addition, biological recycling is a key principle at Sonae Arauco. Increasing the efficient use of wood recycling is one of the most strategic areas of investment. Therefore, in some cases, the share of recycled wood in particleboard production at Sonae Arauco already exceeds 65 percent.