Wehlers ApS, a furniture manufacturer from Denmark, offers its customers worldwide eco-friendly furniture.
By purchasing, returning, reselling and renting out products, the company extends the lifespan of the furniture and thus avoids waste. The company aims to use less resources and to promote a circular economy. TENTE is also embracing the challenge of producing castors in an environmentally friendly way. TENTE’s contribution to sustainability is the Anika evo castor.
The starting point
Wehlers ApS uses waste and recycled materials to create chairs with award-winning design and environmental credentials. The furniture manufacturer recycles fishing nets, computer waste and pharmaceutical industry plastic waste and turns them into chairs. Green plastic is used for fishing nets, black for computer waste and blue for pharmaceutical waste. “ With our chairs, we use recycled materials and bring something new into the economic cycle,” states Henrik Holm Wehler. “We take this furniture back when it is no longer needed and offer it to other customers. This is how we avoid new waste.” When TENTE approached Wehlers ApS and presented the Anika evo castor, which is made from biomaterial, Henrik Holm Wehler immediately realised that these two products would be a perfect match.
The furniture manufacturer has recently launched its R.U.M. Wheel Fisherman’s chair with the Anika evo castor from TENTE. This chair is already successfully used by the Carlsberg Group brewery, the Liverpool football club and the children’s town of the toy manufacturer LEGO. The version with castors is particularly suitable for classrooms and event spaces where furniture needs to be rearranged quickly.
A sustainably manufactured piece of furniture needs a sustainable castor
The concept of sustainability is defined in many different ways. For Wehlers ApS, it stands for treating the ecosystem with respect, providing the chance to repair and reuse products and recognising their history. This is why Wehler ApS chairs are labelled with a chip. Customers can use an app to track information about who has already used the chair. Furthermore, the use of renewable materials is another important factor
Our task: to manufacture an environmentally friendly castor for our customers that is both durable and features an appealing design.
Just like the well-known Anika furniture castor, the Anika evo features outstanding stability, a clear design and a range of different colours. Numerous furniture manufacturers successfully use this design award-winning castor. It is available in various sizes and with different fitting options. TENTE set itself the task of producing a compatible castor with an environmentally friendly material. This posed a particular challenge as it involves load-bearing parts whose stability and therefore safety for users must be absolutely guaranteed.
Throughout the product development phase, TENTE employees exchanged ideas with their customers from the furniture industry. Since TENTE was keen to preserve resources and not use materials that are classified as food, they decided to use castor oil, which can be used for pharmaceutical purposes but is not edible like maize or sugar cane.
Meanwhile, TENTE tested the processing of castor bean granulate, which is extracted from the seeds of the castor bean plant. This required the development and adaptation of tools and work processes. As a result, TENTE has launched the Anika evo, a castor that is not only based on 80 to 98 % biomaterial but is also comparable to the Anika castor, which is made from standard synthetic materials. This applies to the different versions of the Anika castor and their size, fitting and the possibility of customizing it by printing. The material TENTE uses for the castor Anika evo has a reduced CO2 footprint by 28 % compared to the regular Anika. This is in accordance with ISO 14040 standards.
“When designing a new product, we always think about what will happen to it once it is no longer needed by the respective customer. When it comes to protecting the environment, we are in full agreement with our supplier TENTE.”
Henrik Holm Wehler, Managing Director of Wehlers ApS
Being able to replace the Anika castor with the Anika evo castor makes using this environmentally friendly castor particularly customer-friendly. However, TENTE is already testing alternative materials and recycled components not only for furniture castors, but also for castors used in other areas.
