- OVERVIEW/ MARKET
OPPORTUNITY/ VALUE CHAIN/
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY/
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT - 1.Overview
- Style Limited (ASX code: “SYP”) specialises in the R&D, manufacturing and marketing of “green” flooring products based on patented strand woven technologies. The patented manufacturing process ensures a unique and consistent product that is of a renewable nature and competes with the best quality hardwood in the world. Style’s flooring products are therefore
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- Green
- High Quality / High Performance
- Unique visuals
- Innovative
- Style positions itself as the green alternative to hardwood. It is not reliant on the exploitation of tropical rain forests or old growth forest timbers.
- 2.Market opportunity
- Increasing consumer concern over climate change is creating a vast “green building” market for sustainable design and construction products and services. Much of this growth will be in the commercial building sector- offices, retail outlets, and industrial and government facilities – where stringent technical requirements have largely prevented the entry of natural wooden flooring products.
This opportunity is destined to grow even further as the cost of hardwood continues to increase due to resource scarcity and logging restrictions, and as government policies and subsidies create additional incentives for developers and architects to utilise certified green building materials.
Worldwide demand for flooring totals around 12 billion sqm valued at $162 billion. Within that, the non-resilient sector accounts for 6 billion sqm. Style primary source of business are the “Laminate/Engineered/Wood” categories, representing 1, 7 billion sqm globally.
In addition, Style has currently the infrastructure in place to produce flooring products only.
However, there are a variety of building application possibilities based on the strand woven technology, such as decking, panelling, furniture boards, container flooring and structural beams. - 3.Value Chain
- Style owns and operates its manufacturing sites in the Zhejiang province in the Peoples Republic of China. The company has significant experience owning and operating manufacturing operations in China.
Raw Moso Bamboo material is sourced on the open market and transformed into strand woven bamboo blocks in several block factories. The block factories operate under licensed manufacturing agreements with Style. The strand woven blocks are transformed into finished flooring products in the fully owned finishing factory Anji Ya Feng. This factory has an infrastructure in place for an output capacity of 5 million sqm. 
- An operations office oversees all customer orders from purchase order through to production, independent quality checks and final shipping. This guarantees the necessary product quality and timeliness of delivery.
Sales, IP, finance and investor relations are coordinated from the HQ in Melbourne, with an increasing expansion of regional sales offices in the key geographic regions.
- 4.Intellectual Property
- Style’s IP is captured in its strand woven technology. This specific technology allows the transformation of “soft and low value” input materials into “hard and high value” finished products. Style only uses sustainable raw materials as input.
To date, only flooring is being produced as finished products, but the output material is suitable for a broad range of construction application products. 
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- The resulting products are:
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- 2 x harder and denser than original raw material
- Appearance and feel of solid hardwood
- Exceptional stability
- Excellent Flammability resistance
- Durable, solid boards suitable for both commercial and residential installation
- Accredited as Green Building Products
- 5.Research & Development
- Style’s R&D is based on two product material pillars, using the strand woven technology as the base.
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- Pillar 1 : Strand woven Moso Bamboo
- This is the original patented technology, and is the essence of the Style product range to date. The Chinese manufacturing patent has been filed in 2004.
Style is recognized in the industry as the market leader in Strand Woven Bamboo: -
- First to develop and launch our patented Strand Woven Bamboo
- First to develop Floating Floor installation with Uniclic
- First to launch low gloss super matte finish
- First to launch “StyleGuard”, an innovation in SW
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- Pillar 2 : Strand woven Timber
- This is a breakthrough project enabling the processing of inexpensive, fast-growing timber species into a high density natural material suitable for a broad range of product and construction applications. Strand Woven Timber flooring matches the strength and durability of their tropical hardwood rivals. The raw materials are sourced from fast growing, sustainable forests, adding value to species that have limited industrial application such as Chinese Fir and Eucalyptus which are traditionally used for chipping and pulp.
In addition, successful production runs have been done with “wood waste” (un-utilized timber waste material left over from previous manufacturing or damaged timber). This has the dual advantage of adding value and minimising wastage from other applications of a very scarce resource- wood.
New patents for this strand woven Timber technology have been filed in China, USA and Europe in September 2008, and are pending. To date, R&D testing has been done on several wood species. Chinese Eucalyptus is in the final stages of production test runs for market launch in 2010.
