“The difficulties of the past year could not slow us down and, despite many imponderables, we are confident for the year 2021”, Franco Bulian, who has taken over the management of Catas since the first of January, explains with a view to the current business year. Of course, the Corona pandemic also always poses great challenges for the successful European testing laboratory of the wood furniture industry. “We were able to close the terrible year 2020 with better results than we had expected,” Bulian continues. “The first two months were very positive, but in March the ‘Covid 19 disaster’ also hit our laboratory and brought us a minus of 15 per cent in the number of tests carried out compared to 2019. Fortunately, we were able to make up for this in the second half of the year, and turnover was ultimately even slightly higher than the previous year. Which was partly due to the increased number of product certifications we issued. In 2020, there were 175 compared to 168 in 2019. For a few months now, the situation has been back to normal, at least in terms of the number of exams. At least normal against the background of the almost daily changing conditions with the pandemic in Italy and around the world.”

So in his new role, Bulian has to deal with some uncertainty, because after all, the lack of events and trade fairs means that the bottom line is a decrease in new products being launched. “However, the first months now in 2021 have shown how nimble the furniture industry is. In addition, there is a great deal of interest from end consumers, who are focusing more on their homes as a result of the ongoing pandemic. Everyone is spending significantly more time at home and wants to make their surroundings beautiful accordingly,” added the new Catas director.

The new ways and habits that have taken hold with the Corona pandemic – namely, communicating digitally – have definitely had positive side effects, according to Bulian: “We at Catas are active in various standardisation working groups at international technical committees. And we meet online much more often now than with analogue meetings, there is more consensus and faster decisions. All this is really good for standardisation,” he commented.

A hot topic is and remains emissions. In the first months of 2021, Catas saw an increase in test requests from customers around the world, many of whom had not had any contact with the lab in previous years. This was also one of the reasons why Catas continued to invest at its headquarters in San Giovanni al Natisone during pandemic times. In the meantime, there are 76 test chambers there that are fully utilised.

The quality of air in living spaces is the focus and important news is expected for the near future: “As part of the activities of the Italian standardisation body, we are working on a standard for the classification of VOC emissions from furniture components,” says Bulian. “So far, there are no rules here that are prescribed by specific laws or regulations. And Italy could be the first country to adopt a standard that allows furniture surfaces to be classified according to their emissions and components, including coating systems. Technically, a furniture manufacturer would be given a standard tool that makes it easier to identify and select chemically safer coated panels and coating systems from the market when they want to produce a low-emission furniture part.”

Sustainability and ecology are important keywords for Catas. It is planned to offer a new service that records the life cycle assessment of a piece of furniture: The “LCA Certificate”. The label could become an important yardstick to assess the sustainability of a product or at least express a certain “respect for the environment”. Again, of course, according to consistent criteria and verifiable laboratory results. However, “LCA certification” is a complex process that requires companies to make considerable investments.

Catas wants to create all these possibilities, wants to act in solidarity with national and international manufacturers who rely on its high testing competence. “At the end of 2020, we had 170 accredited testing procedures, compared to 138 the year before. This number represents our commitment to providing the wood and furniture industry with test reports and certificates that are important and recognised calling cards for quality around the world. I would like to mention here that 40 percent of all enquiries already come from abroad – and we want to further increase the internationality without forgetting our customers in Italy,” Franco Bulian summarises.