Brintons  

www.brintons.net/commercial

Brintons is the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of premium quality Axminster carpet for airports.

Hop on or off a plane at Langkawi, KLIA, Subang, Hong Kong Airport, King Fahd Airport, Heathrow, Singapore Changi, Pudong, Sydney, Melbourne or Portland airport and you will find yourself stepping across plush carpet that is the work of the British-based company.

Chek Lap Kok, Hong-Kong
Chek Lap Kok, Hong-Kong

With 225 years of experience, Brintons continues to set the benchmark for airport carpet and is proud to offer an unrivalled level of service that has redefined expectations in carpet design, manufacture, quality, appearance and longevity.

Today, the award-winning company employs 2000 people globally and, in addition to its worldwide headquarters in Great Britain, it also has design offices in all key markets around the world including Singapore, the USA and Australia.

Brintons also has manufacturing plants in Portugal and India to meet the geographical requirements of its airport customer base and is currently building a brand-new £15 million manufacturing facility in China that will further enhance its worldwide customer reach.

Brintons has earned a proud reputation for its airport work by fully understanding the precise requirements of its customers and making sure it delivers installations – regardless of the size – that are of an exemplary quality and bring airports valuable differentiation and style through original design.

“Many countries view an airport as the first and last chance to impress visitors about the beauty and professionalism of their country, so they like to make a magnificent impression through their airports,” explains Brintons’ global sales and marketing director, Jonathan Stone. “This is a standpoint that we fully understand and we therefore go to great lengths to make sure our carpet creates a lasting impression.”

Changi Lounge, Singapore
Changi Lounge, Singapore

The company’s list of satisfied customers is long and impressive and is testament to how Brintons is perfectly in tune with the requirements of today’s airport specifiers. It is always working hard to maintain its position as the top performer in every aspect of airport carpet delivery.

One of the many key areas in which Brintons excels is design. The company is widely regarded as a design leader and has a team of 80 handpicked, exclusively retained designers that are strategically positioned around the world. Thanks to the skills of these artists, Brintons has been responsible for some of the most detailed and visually inspiring original carpet designs that have ever been installed in an airport. The company’s work at Changi T3 is often held aloft to illustrate this fact – and with good reason.

Equally important as design is product performance. It is not uncommon for an airport carpet to be subjected to foot traffic of more than 25 million people per year. Therefore, whatever carpet solution is provided has to be able to withstand that level of wear.

Brintons is proud to be a leader in the performance stakes, and central to that claim is the ability of its carpets to show an unrivalled resistance to shading and pile reversal. All cut pile carpets are susceptible to shading and pile reversal but Brintons’ vast experience has enabled it to develop market-leading manufacturing skills that increase the shading resistance and overall appearance of its carpet. Lesser quality carpets that do suffer from shading commonly look like they are carrying an unsightly ‘water mark’ which often reflects badly on the airport.

Other performance-related standards that are delivered with every Brintons carpet are excellent self-cleaning properties and the strength of its construction. The common assumption is that nylon is the best material for making a carpet because it has strong resistance to abrasion. However, the reality is that nylon can attract soil, does not have natural soil-hiding characteristics and can collapse under heavy foot traffic – creating a ‘tired’ appearance.

Melbourne Airport
Melbourne Airport

But the exclusive 80/20 mix of natural wool and nylon that Brintons pioneered some years ago has all of the qualities that modern airports require from a carpet. Brintons’ carpet hides soil, is naturally self-cleaning, is easy to clean and responds well to vacuuming, allowing for pile lifting and easy release of soil.

To fully realise the quality of the construction behind a Brintons carpet, it is important to consider the methods involved in modern installation. The basic rule is that if the installer has to stretch and manipulate the carpet to make the pattern match or to keep it straight, the longer it will take to install. This has the potential to cause serious problems for the airport through lost revenue due to closure.

Brintons has worked hard to consistently fine tune its construction techniques and the company is proud to have better pattern control than anyone else in the marketplace. Brintons supplies the straightest possible Axminster with the least amount of ‘bow’ and ‘skew’. This makes the carpet easier to install, allows for a quick job turnaround and gives the best possible installation results – all vital qualities when airport carpet must be installed in a timely and cost efficient manner.

Technical excellence and longevity are qualities that Brintons aims to achieve in every project. Its carpet at Hong Kong Airport withstood foot traffic of more than 25 million people per year for ten years, without a single complaint during that lifetime. This is a record that no other manufacturer can genuinely lay claim to.

Airport specifiers also choose Brintons because of the company’s ability to manage a project smoothly and meet all critical time deadlines. Brintons is proud to be the only carpet company in the world that offers a full project management service, handling all aspects of the design, manufacture and installation of a carpet.

The importance of this service was illustrated when Brintons not only delivered all of its material to Pudong Airport ahead of schedule, but that the installation of the carpet was completed to the exact timeframe set out by the client at the outset. There were no delays or problems.

“We set ourselves very high standards for every project that we undertake and we make it a priority to deliver on every front,” Jonathan Stone explains. “Airports are often very difficult projects because of the scale of the product, the environment that you are working in and the requirements of the customer. A project of this nature therefore needs to be handled carefully and skilfully.”

He likens the mechanics of the Brintons project management ‘machine’ to the workings typically found in an expensive Swiss watch: “Yes, we have to deliver the finest carpet and consistent and reliable product solutions. But in order to get to that stage we have to make sure that everything we do works precisely. We must perform in every way required and everything must happen when it is intended. Being late with a carpet – even by a single day – is a disaster and is something that will not be tolerated.”

And this is what sets Brintons apart from its competitors. It is not uncommon for other carpet manufacturers to get so distracted by the size of the carpet order for an airport – sometimes in excess of 20 acres – that they take their eye off the ball and overlook the need to perform and the degree of difficulty that is required to execute the project successfully. Brintons is different.

“Our experience has made us very, very good at large projects and our results are there for all to see in different airports around the world,” Jonathan Stone adds. “With every project that we undertake, we give the best of ourselves and focus on the requirement and also the solution.

“But supplying a carpet is just one task and not even the ‘real’ task. The ‘real’ task is making sure we help to deliver the airport on time and in a perfect state ready to perform. Every other carpet manufacturer will say they do this but the reality is that very few really do.”

Email: Solutions@brintons.co.uk
Australia: + 61 39 676 3333
Europe: + 44 1562 635 665
US: + 1 678 594 9300
Web: www.brintons.net/commercial

 

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