Sustainability in mattresses and beds has been a more obvious part of new product development in recent years, with each edition of the Bed Show seeing more manufacturers realising this is where the market is heading, and those who were at the launch of the shift making greater strides. Be it the use of raw materials such as hemp, creating new technologies to recycle products once thought unrecyclable, or eliminating the use of other materials, the major part of the sector is unrecognisable from where it was just a few years ago.
This is not a message that has been set by the manufacturers alone: the National Bed Federation has been instrumental in getting most of the industry to read from the same hymn sheet, if not sing loudly, and ensure that products produced by members are safe and are what they say they are.
Vita Group celebrated its 75th anniversary with further evidence of its sustainability drive bearing fruit, with several ranges at the show. Chief amongst these were Origin, a next-generation foam developed using plant-based polyols; Novus, which is reconstituted foam blocks constructed through a process of bonding post-industrial foam offcuts; and Orbis, Europe’s first flexible polyurethane foam made by incorporating polyols sourced from recycled post-consumer foam.
The company previewed a number of products last year but the portfolio is now gaining traction. The company is also pushing its sustainability drive, which has involved the creation of a dedicated sustainability team featuring both legal and scientific roles. Stemming from this is the lifecycle analysis tool that allows Vita’s clients to meet their own targets on sustainability.
Carpenter highlighted its Podz foam springs, a finalist in the Bed Industry Awards Component Product of the Year category, combining innovation and sustainability as they allow entire mattresses to be recycled. Different grades and lengths of foam provide different feels to mattresses, providing bespoke options to retailers. The company’s Celsius+ graphite foam and Aurora+ graphite foam offer 8% and 14% heat transfer respectively.
Shire Beds used the show to highlight its white label options and its investment in hand side-stitching.
Highgrove highlighted its new five year guarantee and warranty products on Highgrove beds and five-year guarantees on adjustable beds as it showcased its ErgoMatic adjustable beds and Fastersleep service, which aims to deliver orders to retailers within a week.
Mattressgard continues to attract new stockists following the departure of Protect-A-Bed. The Copper Comfort mattress protector, which provides a therapeutic, ‘positive energy experience’ thanks to the copper in the protector, and a bed care kit were its latest additions.
After a busy year with the Uno brand, Breasley’s focus was on the upper-market Salus offer. The show saw the Exclusive
Collection expanded to five models with the 8,000 spring Monteverde, 10,000 spring Daintree and 12,000 spring Sequioa. A further two mattresses are in development ahead of a 2025 launch.
Enkev showed the latest additions to the Pure range and highlighted its support for farmers, building a network and paying a fair price to encourage good animal welfare.
Sweet Dreams’ key message was its rebranding. More than 40 new models and price points were on show, with the Astridge 4500 with its wool mattress described as a bed you sleep in, rather than on. Other introductions included the orthopaedic Wagner Firm 2000.
As well as winning Supplier of the Year in the Bed Industry Awards, Handy was a finalist in the Component Product of the Year category for its woven wool tape edge.
Its development was driven by the demand from the market to create a narrow-woven mattress tape edge that embraced natural, eco-friendly properties.
The tape edge also needed to be fire retardant, without the use of harmful chemicals. Narrow weaving looms are designed primarily to work with polyester, polypropylene and similar man-made fibres. These yarns either require flame retardant chemical treatment and/or emit toxic chemicals if exposed to fire. Cotton, a natural and loom-friendly thread, was a non-starter as it is highly flammable.
Narrow weaving with wool, which is inherently flame retardant, presented challenges as wool is normally knitted rather than woven. Wool yarn that offered the strength of man-made yarns and was appropriate for weaving was
therefore needed.
Bespoke modifications to the looms needed to be made and weaving speeds moderated. Overcoming the fibrous nature of wool yarn involved investing in extraction facilities around the loom to combat the constant build-up of wool fibres as the loom was in operation. A dedicated production area, well away from the man-made yarn tape production looms needed to be created to further contain the wool fibres.
Wool yarn can be dyed in relatively small batch quantities of about 20,000m, enabling the company to offer its customers the option of tape edge in bespoke colours with much smaller minimum orders than synthetic yarns. Only organic dyes are used in this process with Global Organic Textile Standard certification.
