Made in Our Hometown: IVC Makes Vinyl Floori

At IVC US in Dalton, it's not just any production line that creates their rolls of vinyl flooring. "This line is the longest sheet vinyl line in the world," says co-CEO Xavier Steyaert. "It is over a quarter of a mile long. It, totally laid out, is longer than the Empire State Building is high."

The Belgian company, that originally just imported their products to Dalton from Europe, now makes more than a quarter of North America's vinyl flooring here in Northwest Georgia. "We decided to come to Dalton because there is no other place for flooring or manufacturing to be than in Dalton, Georgia," Steyaert says.

The production process starts with one of five coating stations. Then the layers are cured and set. "You could almost compare this to making a cake. Various layers at the end of the day are going to be cured and it's going to come out as one piece of sheet vinyl."

Then it's on to design where up to six huge cylinders imprint ink onto the thousand rolls that roll through this line every day, adding texture, depth and color. The goal, IVC says, is to make this vinyl look more like wood and tile than the retro rolls of decades past. "We always like to say we are not our grandmother's vinyl."

After a quick u-turn, the backing is bound, baked, then inspected and ready to be rolled. While the more than 250 employees at IVC are already turning out 10 truckloads of their vinyl revival a day, hundreds more jobs are on the way with a huge expansion, to create a second plant at IVC, putting Dalton on the map not just for carpet, but vinyl flooring, as well.

"We have people that move from all over the world that relocate their families," says compounding supervisor Nathan Bennett. "I mean it doesn't get any better than that."

For more on IVC US, click here to visit their website.

By: Latricia Thomas

Видео Made in Our Hometown: IVC Makes Vinyl Floori канала WTVC NewsChannel 9