Mission and Commitment

Social and environmental responsibility has long been key corporate objectives within Tate Access Floors. Through continuous improvements and focus our Ability to Sustain our environment, customers, community and company is stronger today than it has ever been.

The steps required to foster a better environment are not taken lightly. Many of the initiatives that we at Tate execute to improve our sustainability actually took shape before the push to “go green” became popularized. We constantly investigate and implement new ways to reduce the environmental impact of the manufacturing process and business operations through improved energy efficiency, automation, and environmentally friendly solutions.

Tate makes it a priority to continually search for improvements that will reduce its environmental footprint while maintaining an ability to deliver superior products and services to customers. This commitment to providing the best quality access floor solutions that are also more sustainable is equally important to our customers – allowing them to claim less environmental impact related to the acquisition of project materials. Customers are further served through Tate’s continued adoption of new sustainable technologies, to increase production capacity and ensure that customer needs are met quickly and efficiently, providing them with on-time shipment of material at a rate needed to support any size installation.

Our customers enjoy additional sustainable and high-performance benefits by using Tate solutions in their buildings. Some of those benefits include:

• Improved energy efficiency
• Healthier indoor environmental quality
• Reduction of material use
• Design possibilities that allow for a more flexible and adaptable built environment
• Reuse of service distribution materials during reconfiguration

Beyond the environment and our customers, Tate embraces its role as part of a larger corporate and social community, and sees it as crucial to any corporate sustainability commitment. Tate is an advocate of high-performance and sustainable construction, and thereby supports both the business and local community through active participation in key organizations, ethical procurement, supply chain management and social responsibility. Its affiliations and charitable contributions to causes that support or raise awareness of environmentally friendly organizations help Tate contribute to a growing list of practical solutions.

As a company, Tate ensures its own sustainability through graduate recruitment and mentoring programs, and by offering employees the appropriate training on environmental and job related subjects. Everyone from key suppliers to installation contractors is fully involved living, promoting, and guarding the SustainAbility mission of Tate, its customers, the environment, and the community at large.

Over the years Tate has taken many initiatives to lessen the environmental impact of our manufacturing process. Several large capital investments have been made in recent years to purchase more efficient machinery and migrate to a fully automated manufacturing process thereby reducing energy usage and our impact on the environment. Significant advancements have been made to the paint line which now generates almost zero harmful VOC’s. The panel cement fill line has also been automated and includes a 100% grey water recycling system.

Our quest for continual improvement is evident in our recent ISO 14001:2004 environmental certification & ISO 9001:2000 quality certification. In 2006 Tate became a partner for climate change in the EPA's Climate Leaders program and will be setting aggressive goals for reducing our green house gas emissions in the future.

Tate is committed to providing the best quality access floors in the world by requiring stringent product performance and consistency criteria from both its manufacturing operations and partners. With the continued addition of sustainable technology and capacity in our fully owned manufacturing facilities, coupled with international manufacturing agreements, we ensure our ability to respond to our customer’s needs quickly and efficiently delivering on-time shipment of material to support any size installation.

Access flooring and underfloor service distribution offer a high performance and sustainable solution for the design and construction of commercial buildings. The distribution of HVAC, electrical power, voice and data cabling and other utilities underneath an accessible modular floor offers enhanced energy-efficiency, life-cycle material savings, configuration flexibility and whole building sustainability.

As an advocate of green and sustainable construction we support both our business and local community through participation in key organizations such as the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), Center for the Built Environment at Cal Berkley and the Syracuse Center for Excellence. In addition, Tate sponsored the 2006 Cornell University Solar Decathlon team which used raised flooring in there solar power concept house. Tate has enacted ethical procurement, supply chain management and social responsibility policies to ensure the products we purchase are not unnecessarily harming the environment or depleting natural resources.

The future of any company is only as strong as the associates it employs. Tate is ensuring the sustainability of our company through our graduate recruitment and mentoring program. Every employee at Tate is provided the opportunity to receive further training on environmental and other job related subjects. Having highly trained associates enables us to share our experiences so everyone from key suppliers to the access floor installation contractor is fully involved in helping maintain the SustainAbility of Tate.