The Wide Use of Plastic Lumber (Plastic Wood)
As a type of popular outdoor furniture material, plastic lumber is often used to manufacture various kinds of indoor and outdoor furniture. Nowadays, in our daily lives, you can see plastic wood furniture everywhere around you since it can seamlessly blend functionality with style across various settings. Imagine that when you are walking through a city park which is decorated with picnic tables and benches that are made of plastic wood, the sleek designs of the furniture complemented by the lush greenery. Or imagine that when you are lying on a cosy plastic lumber sofa set on your patio, the durable sofa not only provides you with a comfortable resting area but also undergoes changing weather conditions.
What is more, plastic wood dining sets and bar sets are also commonly seen in outdoor cafes and restaurants as they can gracefully enhance the ambience of the outdoor spaces while offering people comfortable seating options. In one word, nowadays, no matter whether in urban landscapes or suburban havens, plastic wood furniture easily integrates into our daily routines, elevating our outdoor experiences with its durability, style, and sustainability. Therefore, in this article, we will discuss the criteria of how to find a reliable plastic wood supplier for you.
Benefits of Plastic Wood Material
Although plastic wood is not real wood and is entirely made of plastics, it mimics the natural appearance and grains of real wood, guaranteeing its appealing aesthetics while maintaining its sustainability. Plastic wood is made of recycled plastic materials, such as high-density polyethylene (HDPE), polystyrene (PS), or polyvinyl chloride (PVC) with additives for enhancing strength and stability.
- Best For Outdoor Use
In addition to its fashionable real-wood appearance, other benefits make plastic lumber stand out in the outdoor furniture industry. That is because plastic lumber is sturdy and has a strong resistance to different weather elements such as heavy sunshine, rain, wind, insects and rot. Furniture that is manufactured with plastic wood can always be the most long-lasting and practical outdoor decoration in your commercial or residential outdoor areas. Before you make your final decision on the target plastic wood manufacturer, you should get some free samples from it to evaluate the quality.
- Environmentally Friendly Material
With people’s growing awareness towards environmental awareness, more and more furniture suppliers and brands have started to choose some environmentally friendly materials that bring no harm to the earth to produce their products. These brands not only strengthen their green social responsibilities by doing this but also can contribute to a greener lifestyle for humans. For example, plastic wood is an eco-friendly material that does not contain any wooden components and does not require any behaviours of deforestation, which can largely contribute positively to the environment.
- Easy to Clean and Maintain
Last but not least, plastic wood furniture is easy to clean and maintain, which does not need any additional care from people. Since the weather outdoors often changes and the furniture will be easily covered by a layer of dust, choosing furniture that is easy to clean is essential. If you leave the plastic wood dining set outdoors without using it for a long time or leave some food stains on it after a wonderful feast, you just need to use some soapy water to wipe it gently to remove the dirt. Plastic wood material not only saves your time in cleaning but also saves your daily effort, making it easy to maintain the original charm of your outdoor furniture and ambience.
Reputation of the Plastic Wood Manufacturer
Before you select the right plastic wood supplier for your furniture products, you have to take a look at the reputation of the manufacturers that you are interested in working with. Imagine that if you are browsing a global supplier of furniture materials, you might be worried about whether this company is trustworthy or not since you know nothing about the company. Therefore, considering the reputation of the supplier is essential. By doing this, you need to evaluate the reliability through their experience, qualifications, customer reviews, awards and so on.
- Industrial Experience
The official website serves as a valuable resource where you can find comprehensive information. When considering purchasing high-quality plastic wood materials, it’s essential to assess the supplier’s longevity in the outdoor furniture industry and the maturity of its manufacturing expertise. A supplier with extensive industry experience and refined skills is more likely to deliver materials of superior quality.
Additionally, when evaluating manufacturers’ industrial experience, it’s vital to consider their factory capacities. A strong capacity for development, manufacturing, and timely delivery ensures that the supplier can meet diverse requirements and fulfil orders efficiently.
- Online Reviews and Ratings
Except for objective information such as the industrial experience and so on, you should also have a look at reviews and ratings from potential manufacturers’ customers to see whether their materials are worth purchasing. Leisure Touch Rattan, as a leading plastic rattan and plastic wood supplier in China with more than 25 years of industrial experience, has served more than thousands of customers all over the world. A wealth of customer feedback and reviews is readily available on their website.
What is more, social media platforms offer valuable insights into supplier reputations and customer satisfaction since they will interact with people from all over the world on their social media accounts to foster stronger connections with their clientele.
Assessment of the Manufacturing Process
If you’re seeking a dependable supplier of plastic wood for your outdoor furniture, there’s a practical approach to evaluating them. A thorough examination of their manufacturing process can provide valuable insights. Consider browsing through videos or textual descriptions on the supplier’s website to see their professionalism. For instance, let’s take a closer look at Leisure Touch Rattan’s meticulous process for crafting top-quality plastic wood boards. Here’s a breakdown of the six steps involved in LTR’s manufacturing process.
Step 1: Material Preparation
The first step of LTR’s plastic wood board manufacturing is about mixing and blending the needed materials. Typically, this process entails harmonizing a selection of important raw materials such as HDPE, PS, and antioxidants. These components are meticulously measured and blended according to LTR’s proprietary production formula, ensuring precision and consistency throughout the whole manufacturing process.
Step 2: Extrusion Process
This step is mainly about shaping ideal plastic wood boards by temperature control. After the first material mixing process, the mixture is fed into an extruder. The extruder heats the mixture to a high temperature, and the melted mixture is then forced through a die to form the shape of a board. The extruded board is then cooled using a water bath to solidify it.
Step 3: Molding Process
LTR executives this step to guarantee the specification of plastic wood boards. They use a hydraulic press to press and shape the boards to keep them in a consistent shape that customers require.
Step 4: Size Treatment
Flatting and cutting processes happen during this step. They use high-pressure automatic machines to flatten the boards. In this cutting process, lots of advanced cutting tools are involved to cut the desired size of the boards, including CNC machines, drills, and saws.
Step 5: Surface Treatment
The fifth step is to complete the brushing and embossing surface treatment of the boards. It can help improve the appearance and durability of the material. As a sophisticated plastic wood manufacturer in China, LTR offers a range of surface treatments, including embossing, polishing, and sanding to enhance the smoothness and attractiveness of the surfaces. Besides, this step can also improve plastic wood boards’ resistance to scratches and stains.
Step 6: Final Packing Process
This final step is to apply a layer of strong protection to the plastic wood boards so that LTR’s customers can get their products in perfect condition after the shipping. In this step, the boards are carefully stacked and wrapped in cartons with a protective PE foam cover; and are delivered to their destination promptly.
After knowing the manufacturing process of how Leisure Touch Rattan produces their plastic wood boards, you might have a deeper and clearer understanding of how a plastic wood supplier manufactures its materials with the highest quality. Therefore, when you are selecting an excellent plastic wood manufacturer for your outdoor furniture, looking at its production process might help you to filter out the factories that do not meet your needs.
Considering the Exquisite Manufacturing Craftsmanship
Except for the professional production process that we mentioned above, considering the craftsmanship of making different kinds of plastic wood boards also matters a lot. That is because as a trustable plastic wood supplier, it should have a strong production capacity to manufacture various kinds of plastic wood boards with different styles so that it can satisfy the various needs of its valued customers.
For example, Leisure Touch Rattan has sophisticated manufacturing craftsmanship that can produce plastic wood in different styles. It is dedicated to providing high-quality solutions to its customers.
1. Minimalist One-Sided Plastic Wood
For this style, the plastic wood board has a uniform colour inside and outside the material. To achieve this effect, LTR maintains a consistent single colour for the whole board, presenting a uniform appearance across the entire wood board.
2. Special Binding Technique
This production technique is similar to the one-sided effect, however, the outer and inner parts of the plastic wood board for this technique have two different colours due to the special binding craftsmanship that separates the colours of the two sectors.
3. Thermal Printing Style
LTR’s thermal printing skill allows for the application of a layer of the customized membrane with various patterns on a single surface or all sides of the plastic wood boards, perfectly catering to your customer’s specific needs.
4. Colour Matrix Style
This style can make the plastic wood boards look like real wood the most. Plastic wood with this style is crafted with irregular lines and grains, maintaining the natural and pure conditions of real wood, which enables your customers to leave a strong impression on people with their high-end products.
5. Printing Style
Most people will feel confused between this style and thermal printing skill since they are kind of similar in creating the surface effects of plastic wood boards. However, they are different in the manufacturing process. This skill allows for more personalized effects compared to thermal transfer methods. Direct printing of different patterns on plastic wood board seamlessly integrates patterns and the wood board, resulting in a softer texture than thermal printing.
The Speed of Production and Shipping
In addition to the quality of products, the speed of completing and delivering products on time is one of the essential factors that you have to consider. Imagine that you are working with a foreign plastic wood manufacturer and it repeatedly fails to deliver goods on the expected date, it will not only affect your production schedule but also affect your reliability in customers’ minds. As a result, do not forget to pay attention to suppliers’ efficiency in manufacturing and shipping processes. You can check the customer feedback on the manufacturer’s official websites, social media accounts, and some large procurement websites to see if the target supplier’s delivery speed meets your expectations.
For instance, Leisure Touch Rattan has its own professional production and supervision team to maintain its speed of manufacturing and delivery. They guarantee to let their customers get their materials on time by controlling a production speed of 95%. What is more, from LTR’s database, it records that most of the production completion speed is over 100%, which means LTR always manufactures and delivers the products to its customers on time.
Timely and Professional After-sales Service
There is no doubt that after-sales service is also a useful criterion to verify whether a manufacturer is reliable. Because some manufacturers may only focus on selling their products, and as long as the order is completed, they will not take care of any after-sales issues, which is very irresponsible. They may answer your questions in a perfunctory way, or they may simply not read the messages.
Therefore, if you are looking for a reliable supplier, you must pay attention to this detail. Are you wondering how to check whether this after-sales service is reliable? You can find the contact information of the supplier on its official website or social media account; it may be an email address or a live chat. The speed at which they respond to your questions is a kind of reference for you to a certain extent.
Conclusion
After reading the above paragraphs, you may have a deeper understanding of the production process and different styles of plastic wood boards. By understanding these production details, it can provide you with some expertise insights while you are choosing a reliable supplier. That is because whether a supplier is reliable or not is composed of lots of factors. For example, suppliers’ reputation, production skills, production efficiency, product quality, shipping, after-sales service, etc. are all important factors that can help verify whether a manufacturer is reliable. I hope that after reading this article, I can provide you with useful help in choosing a reliable plastic wood manufacturer for your excellent outdoor furniture.
