Change in furniture production concept!

Stage 1: Awareness

During the last years an enormous change in the mindset of both professionals and households towards furniture is obvious. People tend to buy more furniture which is produced in modern facilities with less harming the environment materials and processes.

At Kasto chairs we were observing this change of behaviour and for the last 5 years we have created an investment plan which would make our production facilities acceptable and recognized by the market as green, modern, and caring.

Stage 2: Research and planning

Although we knew that without making our production greener, we would be destined to decline in sales in the coming years we also had to take care of our competitiveness. Therefore, we have researched extensively the market for 5 years and we have picked up the best equipment in the World which would turn our factory at a top notch chairs production facility.

Stage 3: Funding and investing

At first, we started the modernization process with our own funds and bank loans. After a while we realized that if we continue to invest only like written above it will take a decade before we finish the plan and then we would have to start over the process again with a newer and greener equipment. Therefore, we started looking for solutions which could help us to increase the speed of our investment activity. Luckily, we found out that Innovation Norway was co-funding projects like ours and we have applied to the program naming the project “Greening the chairs”.

Innovation Norway – “Greening the KASTO chairs”

The main outcome of the project is to increase the company’s competitiveness through introduction of new green technologies. We proposed to Innovation Norway an investment into a Sawdust extraction and heating system, as well as a Drying system. In addition, we will also invest in an Automatic planer and moulder that will result into faster operations, reduced energy consumption, and will contribute to full utilization of the wooden material with minimum generated waste.

The project will create an important value for our company in terms of improvement of the working conditions and better utilization of the resources. At the end we expect 2 new jobs to be created under the project.

Stage 4: Approval and realization

Fortunately, Innovation Norway saw potential in our project and decided to help us with funding part of it. As a result we plan to finalize all investment activities in 2022. Moreover, all equipment was already ordered in August 2021 and will be partially delivered before the end of the year.

Kasto chairs’ advice: If you have a similar project do not hesitate to search for help and cooperation at Innovation Norway.