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Dura Composites Celebrates 25th Anniversary with ISO14001 Global Standards Achievement

As it marks the milestone of 25 years in business, Dura Composites has announced that the company has achieved the internationally recognised ISO 14001 certification, the standard that specifies criterion for an effective environmental management system. Awarded by NQA, the ISO 14001 quality mark is aimed at enhancing the environmental performance of Dura Composites by controlling the company’s impact on the environment as well as reducing resource use and improving overall efficiency.

Dura Composites vision of making composites mainstream has kept the company focused on solving real-world challenges for clients and customers, often above more traditionally accepted materials such as steel, wood and concrete. With many procurement specifications now requiring ISO 14001 as a condition to supply, certification is the best way to keep pace with the ever changing industry landscape and demonstrate independent verification of our practices.

As well as supplying composite timber anti-slip decking and fade resistant composite timber cladding which feature up to 87% recycled content, Dura Composites is also an expert in the design, manufacture and supply of Glass Reinforced Polymer (GRP) products which are widely acknowledged to have major advantages over more conventional material options as they are less energy-intensive in development and have an extremely long lifecycle.

With any material it’s important to consider the whole lifecycle and all its associated costs, including installation, how long it will last and what kind of maintenance (if any) it will require to keep it functioning and looking its best. Dura Composites’ GRP products offer considerably low life cycle costs due to their maintenance-free, corrosion-resistant and impact-resistant characteristics compared with traditional materials, and market leading products such as Dura Grating come with a reassuring 25-year warranty and a design life of up to 60 years.

Talking about the achievement, Tom Bowman Commercial Director of Dura Composites and Stuart Burns, Managing Director said;

“Certification to ISO 14011:2015 sends a clear message to all our customers and partners that we are taking a leading and proactive approach to quality and environmental management as part of our ambition to make composites mainstream. We have always operated a culture of continuous improvement at Dura Composites and the path to certification has been a great way to engage our employees to work together towards our stringent environmental goals. As well as meeting the requirements of the standard, we are passionate about ensuring that the lifecycle benefits of our products are widely understood and that we continue building a successful and sustainable business that we can all feel proud to be a part of.”

The recent launch of the unique high spec d2 GRP series further supports its environmental credentials by reducing the carbon impact on the environment due to its clever weight reducing designs, future-proof fire resistance specification and proven 1m footfall anti-slip gritted surface.

Within a circular economy, re-use is the most economically and environmentally beneficial strategy. Finished products are worth much more than the raw materials they are composed of and direct re-use preserves the most value and embodied energy. In the case of our Dura Grating panels for example, even after they have been used for their intended purpose and reach the end of their lifecycle in the original context, they can easily be up-cycled or repurposed in other ways.

As part of its commitment to environmental sustainability, Dura Composites operates a sister company called Dura Upcycling Ltd which offers goods for use in additional non-standard applications as part of our commitment to upcycling and encouraging re-use and re-purposing of our materials wherever possible, taking advantage of their inherent durability and other properties. Secondary uses include 4×4 sand ladders, caravan jack pads, stair treads, building site flooring, seedling plant separators, lorry jacks, drain covers, shelving and racking, car parking matting, and farmland access grids – the possibilities are vast.

Certification to ISO 14001 compliments Dura Composites existing ISO 9001 Quality Management achievement, as well as its second coveted Queen’s Award for Enterprise. The Queens Awards are a royal seal of approval for the UK’s most outstanding businesses, and Dura’s Innovation award for its pioneering rapid-deployment train station platform solution known as Dura Platform follows The Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade which was presented to the company in 2017.