Two factories, two counties, one country
Forbo Holding AG runs twelve manufacturing plants worldwide. Three are in the United Kingdom, and two of those make everything on this site.
On this page
Bamber Bridge, Preston, Lancashire — Tessera
Forbo's manufacturing-plants page lists the Bamber Bridge site as producing "TESSERA carpet tiles, including loop, cut and loop, and textured options". The Tessera product pages put it more directly still:
“All of our Tessera carpet tiles are designed and manufactured at our facility in Bamber Bridge.”
That is worth reading carefully, because it covers designed and manufactured. Every one of the 19 Tessera ranges on this site — Accord through Twine, tiles and planks — is drawn and tufted in Lancashire.
There is a certain rightness to it. Lancashire industrialised textile manufacturing; Preston was a cotton town before it was anything else. A tufted carpet tile is not a cotton mill, but the lineage of textile production in that part of the country is real, and Forbo is part of it.
Ripley, Derbyshire — Flotex
Ripley does double duty. It is both the plant where Flotex is made and the registered head office of Forbo Flooring UK Limited, at High Holborn Road, Ripley, Derbyshire DE5 3NT.
Forbo's plants page describes the output as "FLOTEX, an electrostatic Flocked Flooring solution, available in both sheet and tile". Electrostatic flocking is genuinely specialist manufacturing — it is not tufting, not weaving and not calendering, and there are very few plants in the world doing it at commercial scale.
The process stands up to 80 million individual nylon fibres per square metre bolt upright on an adhesive-coated waterproof backing, using an electrostatic field to orient every one of them. That vertical orientation is the whole reason Flotex behaves the way it does.
How flocked flooring is made → · See all 12 Flotex ranges →
What British manufacturing actually buys you
Lead times you can build a programme around
Flooring made in Preston or Ripley and delivered to a site in Manchester, Birmingham or London is a domestic haulage problem, not a container booking. No ocean transit, no port congestion, no customs clearance between the factory and the site. On a phased refurbishment where the floor has to land in a two-day window between trades, that predictability is worth more than a small unit saving.
Replacement stock that still matches
Modular flooring earns its keep over fifteen to twenty years, and the entire argument for it is that damaged units get swapped rather than the floor relaid. That promise only holds if the manufacturer is still running the range, from the same plant, a decade later.
Auditable environmental data
Forbo publishes that 84% of all flooring it sells carries a third-party verified Environmental Product Declaration, and reports an 80% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions between 2004 and 2024. Figures like that are checkable precisely because production sits in identifiable plants under one management system.
Shorter transport emissions in the EPD
The A4 transport module of an EPD is not usually where projects are won, but on a carbon-assessed scheme the difference between a floor shipped from Lancashire and one shipped from another continent is real and it is documented.
The company behind the factories
| Parent company | Forbo Holding AG |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Baar, Canton of Zug, Switzerland |
| Listing | SIX Swiss Exchange |
| Countries of operation | 39 |
| Employees | Approximately 5,050 |
| Net sales 2025 | CHF 1,085.4 million |
| Divisions | Flooring Systems; Movement Systems |
| Manufacturing plants worldwide | 12 |
| UK plants | Bamber Bridge (Tessera), Ripley (Flotex), Telford (Nuway entrance flooring) |
| UK entity | Forbo Flooring UK Limited, High Holborn Road, Ripley, Derbyshire DE5 3NT |
Source: Forbo Group corporate and UK organisation pages. Forbo is a Swiss-headquartered group; the products covered on this site are manufactured in England.
Certifications and standards
| Quality management | ISO 9001 |
|---|---|
| Environmental management | ISO 14001 |
| Ethical supply chain | SA8000 (cited on Flotex) |
| Chemical compliance | REACH-compliant materials |
| Environmental Product Declarations | 84% of all flooring sold carries a third-party verified EPD, including human and eco-health declarations |
| Allergy accreditation | Allergy UK Seal of Approval™ — Forbo states Flotex is the only textile flooring to hold it |
| Take-back scheme | "Back to the Floor" — 902 tonnes of post-consumer waste collected in 2025 |
These are Forbo's own published statements. Confirm current certification status directly with the manufacturer before relying on it in a tender submission. We have deliberately not listed ISO 50001 or BREEAM ratings here, because we could not verify either against Forbo's published material.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Forbo Tessera carpet tiles made?
At Forbo's facility in Bamber Bridge, Preston, Lancashire. Forbo states that all Tessera carpet tiles are designed and manufactured there.
Where is Forbo Flotex made?
At Ripley, Derbyshire, which is also the registered head office of Forbo Flooring UK Limited. Forbo's plants page lists Ripley as producing Flotex flocked flooring in both sheet and tile.
Is Forbo a British company?
Forbo Holding AG is Swiss, headquartered in Baar in the Canton of Zug and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange. The UK entity is Forbo Flooring UK Limited, registered in Ripley, Derbyshire. The products on this site are manufactured in England — that is the claim we make, and it is Forbo's own.
Do Forbo products carry Environmental Product Declarations?
Forbo states that 84% of all flooring it sells carries a third-party verified EPD. We supply the relevant declaration with any quotation. More on sustainability.