SUSTAINABILITY

Premier Cabinet Doors and the Environment

As a business, we want to improve our footprint and reduce impacts on the environment. While at the same time maintaining the same level of high-quality doors for our customers. This way we can improve products and impacts. As a team at Premier Cabinet doors in Perth, we are coming up with creative and new solutions for manufacturing sustainable cabinets that connect our way of working, with planet earth this is the way we want to do business. The Premier way!

Challenge Sustainability

The environment faces big difficulties in this day and age. A lot of the problems we face today are result of day-to-day human activities. Resources we use are moved from one place to ours, to be dispersed after it is used. Additionally, improper management of chemicals and operations can potentially harm ecosystems and human health. From a business perspective, the way of producing is ultimately unsustainable, to the point that we create problems for others and ourselves.

There are three main topics when considering the impacts on the environment. Unsustainable resource depletion, abiotic depletion and human and ecosystem toxicity. These issues are what we want to focus on and can all be related to our company. As a business we want to improve our footprint and reduce impacts on the environment. Damaging activities are changed to better practices, and harmful materials are changed for responsible ones. This way we can improve products and impacts. Coming up with creative and new solutions that connect our way of working with planet earth is the way we want to do business. That is the goal.

From materials to Premier Cabinet Doors

For the production of Premier Cabinet Doors, wood, vinyl, and paints are used. These materials are carefully selected to ensure the quality and durability of our eco friendly cabinets doors. The wood used for the doors comes as panels of medium density fibreboards to our site.

All the MDF boards used are sustainably sourced. Laminex, our supplier, has passed several certificates that ensure the responsible sourcing of this wood. This means that all wood used by our company applies to the Australian and International standards of sustainable forestry. Specifically, these are PEFC and the Australian ASF certificate. Among other criteria, this means that the forests are responsibly managed, the trees are grown back and that there is coexistence for animals that live in forests. In addition to this Laminex has achieved third party certification from Global Green Tag and several ISO standards.

Vinyl wrapped or Top Coat Painted

After the wood is sanded into rough cabinet doors, paint undercoating is applied. This important step in production ensures that the next layer, either vinyl or top coating, will stick to the surface. This must be done perfectly to ensure the best quality and durability of the fronts. To further underline the quality we offer a warranty.

The sustainable cabinets vinyl doors have a warranty of seven years. The painted doors have a warranty for five years. As finisher for the doors, Premier Cabinet Doors applies either vinyl wrapping or painted top coating. To give the fronts the high-classglossy look, vinyl (PVC), rolls are used. These rolls cover the used for some of the cabinet fronts. Glue is applied to the door and the vinyl is wrapped around the door by a machine. About two-thirds of all the fronts made are made with vinyl and amount to more than 28 kilometers of vinyl used every year! The other third of the doors produced here is for the painted top-coated doors. This paint comes in various colors, is applied carefully, and dried in our drying rooms.

Resource use and impacts

For production, combined efforts of machines and manpower create high quality doors. First, two big sawing machines cut out doors from the bigger panels. The doors that are cut from the panels are manually “nested”. This means that the ordered doors are combined and fitted on one board. This way we generate as little waste as possible. The sanding machines then carve out the edges and trim the doors with excellent precision. These machines allow us to be fast, more efficient and ensure the quality we want to deliver.

On our roof stand two solar panel installations that provide energy for these machines to operate. These solar panels have a peak capacity of 66kW and contribute directly to our factory. The remaining energy generated during weekends goes directly back to the grid. This way, we as a company ensure a reduction of fossil fuels used, more renewable energy for WA and cleaner cabinet door production.

Waste

Waste resulting from our daily operations are leftover paints, MDF offcuts, vinyl offcuts, manufacturing errors, and leftover waste ending up in general waste. We are working on finding new methods to recycle more of our waste material to ensure a greener and reduce our impacts on the environment. The current challenge for the business is the disposal of MDF and Vinyl. Both these materials are hard to recycle due to cost issues. Furthermore, for the production of eco friendly cabinets doors, we use additional products such as brushes, sanding paper, pantsuits, and wrapping material. Efforts and goals are focused on finding sustainable solutions for these to minimize waste for us and our customers.

Recently Premier has purchased a Formeco Unit to help deal with Paintwaste more sustainably. Formeco units are distillers that allow the recycling and the re-use of degreasing and washing solvents. Through a simple distillation process, they separate the contaminants (resins, polymers, pigments, paints, oils, etc.) from the original solvent. The boiling of the solvent is accomplished by a peripheral heating jacket filled with diathermic oil, heated by an electrical element. The vapors are then conveyed to a condenser cooled by air or water. The condensed solvent is collected in a tank, for its reuse. (The distilled solvent characteristics are not altered by the distillation process, which can be carried on
repeatedly.)

Health and Safety

Health and safety is a top priority for our products and our customers. Proper working conditions for our employees are ensured by providing safe production environmentally friendly cabinets and storage. Everyone working in our manufacturing has to wear the right equipment to protect themselves, and dust is sucked out of the facility. To further ensure health, all MDF doors contain E0 low formaldehyde levels. This means the doors are safe and do not emit harmful amounts of substances.

SUSTAINABILITY

Premier Cabinet Doors and the Environment

Challenge Sustainability

From materials to Premier Cabinet Doors

Vinyl wrapped or Top Coat Painted

Resource use and impacts

Waste

Health and Safety

Need help? Call our support team at (08) 9399 6029

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