Government Regulation

January 14, 2020

SOFFA Act

House Passes SOFFA

The AHFA-backed upholstered furniture flammability legislation mandates CPSC adoption of California’s longtime flammability standard.

12/17/2019

us capitol — (Photo: Unsplash user Joshua Sukoff)

The House of Representatives passed the Safer Occupancy Furniture Flammability Act (SOFFA) (HR 2647) today. The American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA)-backed legislation would make California’s Technical Bulletin 117-2013 a federal flammability standard.

“SOFFA has had bipartisan and broad stakeholder support,” said AHFA CEO Andy Counts, who thanked Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) for co-sponsoring the bill and ensuring it came for a vote. Counts also noted House Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Ranking Member Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), who helped move the measure through the committee process.

Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) co-sponsored the Senate version, S1341, introduced in May and passed by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. It now awaits action by the full Senate.

“If SOFFA is now passed by the Senate, it will provide a legislative victory for both parties and, more importantly, a win for American consumers,” said Counts.

California TB 117-2013 outlines performance standards and methods for testing the smolder resistance of cover fabrics, barrier materials, filling materials and decking materials used in upholstered furniture. It had support from a broad coalition of stakeholders, including AHFA, firefighters, fire scientists, environmentalists and consumer groups.

In October 2015, AHFA formally petitioned the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to adopt the performance standards and test methods prescribed by TB 117-2013 as a national, mandatory flammability standard for residential furniture. The agency evaluated the prospective benefits and costs of adopting the measure but, in September 2016, announced it would pursue “alternative approaches that address the hazard through a combination of research, education and outreach, and voluntary standards efforts.” However, no alternative approaches to the TB 117-2013 standard were ever proposed by the Commission.

The CPSC’s 2019 budget called for yet another review of TB 117-2013, but no action other than “data analysis and technical review” took place.

“For four years, AHFA has advocated making TB 117-2013 a national standard. It would ensure all upholstered residential furniture sold in the United States meets a rigorous fire safety threshold. SOFFA would mandate the best test methods and construction standards we have today but, importantly, it would not prohibit the CPSC from future rule making if new fire safety technologies become available,” Counts said.

SOFFA was introduced in both houses in 2017-2018, but the 115th Congress adjourned in January 2019 with no action on the measure.

https://www.furniturelightingdecor.com/house-passes-soffa

January 14, 2020

SOFFA Act

House Passes SOFFA

The AHFA-backed upholstered furniture flammability legislation mandates CPSC adoption of California’s longtime flammability standard.

12/17/2019

us capitol — (Photo: Unsplash user Joshua Sukoff)

The House of Representatives passed the Safer Occupancy Furniture Flammability Act (SOFFA) (HR 2647) today. The American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA)-backed legislation would make California’s Technical Bulletin 117-2013 a federal flammability standard.

“SOFFA has had bipartisan and broad stakeholder support,” said AHFA CEO Andy Counts, who thanked Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) for co-sponsoring the bill and ensuring it came for a vote. Counts also noted House Energy and Commerce Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Ranking Member Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), who helped move the measure through the committee process.

Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) co-sponsored the Senate version, S1341, introduced in May and passed by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. It now awaits action by the full Senate.

“If SOFFA is now passed by the Senate, it will provide a legislative victory for both parties and, more importantly, a win for American consumers,” said Counts.

California TB 117-2013 outlines performance standards and methods for testing the smolder resistance of cover fabrics, barrier materials, filling materials and decking materials used in upholstered furniture. It had support from a broad coalition of stakeholders, including AHFA, firefighters, fire scientists, environmentalists and consumer groups.

In October 2015, AHFA formally petitioned the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to adopt the performance standards and test methods prescribed by TB 117-2013 as a national, mandatory flammability standard for residential furniture. The agency evaluated the prospective benefits and costs of adopting the measure but, in September 2016, announced it would pursue “alternative approaches that address the hazard through a combination of research, education and outreach, and voluntary standards efforts.” However, no alternative approaches to the TB 117-2013 standard were ever proposed by the Commission.

The CPSC’s 2019 budget called for yet another review of TB 117-2013, but no action other than “data analysis and technical review” took place.

“For four years, AHFA has advocated making TB 117-2013 a national standard. It would ensure all upholstered residential furniture sold in the United States meets a rigorous fire safety threshold. SOFFA would mandate the best test methods and construction standards we have today but, importantly, it would not prohibit the CPSC from future rule making if new fire safety technologies become available,” Counts said.

SOFFA was introduced in both houses in 2017-2018, but the 115th Congress adjourned in January 2019 with no action on the measure.

https://www.furniturelightingdecor.com/house-passes-soffa

January 9, 2020

Cambodia to Convert U.S. Wood to Furniture

A shortage of workers in Vietnam – a huge beneficiary of the U.S. trade war with China – is getting severe enough that some furniture makers are now scouting Cambodia and Bangladesh for factories, according to one industry chief executive.

Labor rates in Vietnam are rising and workers are getting increasingly scarce, said Clarence Smith, CEO of Haverty Furniture Cos., which uses Asian factories to make its company-branded products.

And even though Asian suppliers continue to source much of the timber they use from the Appalachian region of the U.S., the manufacturing of wood furniture “is not coming back to the United States,” Smith said in an interview.

Bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. was one of the Trump administration’s stated goals in imposing tariffs on Chinese-made goods.

The Atlanta-based furniture retailer wrestled with supply chain disruptions last year as the manufacturers it buys from fled China and set up operations in Vietnam. Some suppliers stopped making Haverty’s top-selling merchandise, forcing it to find new sources in Vietnam on the fly and causing shortages of some items at its roughly 120 U.S. showrooms.

For now, most of the disruptions are behind them even if the first phase of the U.S.-China trade deal will keep the 25% tariffs on Chinese-made furniture in place, Smith said. Haverty still imports leather and upholstered pieces from China, although it no longer gets any wood furniture from the country.

The factory relocations aren’t going to end, he said: “They’re already building plants in Cambodia. It’s moving just like it’s always moved.”

Smith compared the shift from China to Vietnam and into other developing Asian countries to U.S. furniture industry’s shift to North Carolina from Michigan a century ago. The upholstered furniture industry has seen a recent resurgence in North Carolina, but Smith said it’s far cheaper for Asian factories to make wood furniture from logs harvested in the Carolinas than for companies to manufacture the same products in the U.S.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/U-S-Furniture-Industry-Eyes-Cambodia-as-14959057.php

January 9, 2020

Cambodia to Convert U.S. Wood to Furniture

A shortage of workers in Vietnam – a huge beneficiary of the U.S. trade war with China – is getting severe enough that some furniture makers are now scouting Cambodia and Bangladesh for factories, according to one industry chief executive.

Labor rates in Vietnam are rising and workers are getting increasingly scarce, said Clarence Smith, CEO of Haverty Furniture Cos., which uses Asian factories to make its company-branded products.

And even though Asian suppliers continue to source much of the timber they use from the Appalachian region of the U.S., the manufacturing of wood furniture “is not coming back to the United States,” Smith said in an interview.

Bringing manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. was one of the Trump administration’s stated goals in imposing tariffs on Chinese-made goods.

The Atlanta-based furniture retailer wrestled with supply chain disruptions last year as the manufacturers it buys from fled China and set up operations in Vietnam. Some suppliers stopped making Haverty’s top-selling merchandise, forcing it to find new sources in Vietnam on the fly and causing shortages of some items at its roughly 120 U.S. showrooms.

For now, most of the disruptions are behind them even if the first phase of the U.S.-China trade deal will keep the 25% tariffs on Chinese-made furniture in place, Smith said. Haverty still imports leather and upholstered pieces from China, although it no longer gets any wood furniture from the country.

The factory relocations aren’t going to end, he said: “They’re already building plants in Cambodia. It’s moving just like it’s always moved.”

Smith compared the shift from China to Vietnam and into other developing Asian countries to U.S. furniture industry’s shift to North Carolina from Michigan a century ago. The upholstered furniture industry has seen a recent resurgence in North Carolina, but Smith said it’s far cheaper for Asian factories to make wood furniture from logs harvested in the Carolinas than for companies to manufacture the same products in the U.S.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/U-S-Furniture-Industry-Eyes-Cambodia-as-14959057.php

January 9, 2020

Government Work

Battelle To Develop Coal-to-Foam Program

Posted on Nov 25, 2019

COLUMBUS, Ohio (Nov. 25, 2019)—Battelle won a recent United States Department of Energy (DOE) award that has an interesting twist for coal.

The DOE announced that Battelle was among its recipients in funding for cost-shared research and development projects. The project is to be executed in a parallel program with the Ohio Coal Development Office. Battelle will develop a process to convert bituminous coal into polyurethane foam products along with some low-sulfur fuel oil by-product. The results are expected to confirm the commercial viability of a coal-to-high-value solid foam products process.

The value proposition is easy to understand: Coal currently sells for $50 to $60 a ton and polyurethane foams sell for $5,000 to $6,000 per ton. Currently, these expensive foams are made from petroleum products, but coal can be converted by either heat or solvents into a polyol that does the same thing.

Based on research that dates to 1974, Battelle has a patent that uses a solvent to transform coal into such a polyol. The high-value chemical can then be used to make foams for a variety of different products, including insulation for buildings, which is good for the environment.

“This traps the carbon in the rigid insulation foam,” said Satya Chauhan, a scientist, business developer and principal investigator on the project. “This is an important project to illustrate the importance of employing a wide variety of approaches to use fossil fuels in an environmentally responsible way and reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere.”

The DOE award project number is DE-FE0031795 and the OCDO/ODSA project number is D-19-05.

https://www.battelle.org/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-detail/battelle-to-develop-coal-to-foam-program