The six advantages of URSA’s insulation materials

Thermal insulation

URSA’s products offer superior thermal comfort in buildings, whether homes or offices. Moreover, thermal insulation helps to reduce costs generated by heating, cooling and ventilation, all while lowering a building’s carbon footprint and thus helping our planet.

In this regard, our insulation products offer unique benefits to the end user: excellent levels of thermal comfort coupled with reduced energy demand – the ideal cost-effective solution.

Thermal insulation is the most cost-effective way to save energy: every euro invested in insulation can result in savings of up to seven times during the product’s lifetime, according to a study by the European Insulation Manufacturers Association (EURIMA).

Our glass mineral wool achieves the best thermal conductivity values among wool insulation materials – as low as 0.030 watts per meter-kelvin (W/mK). It also boasts superior acoustic and fire performance, low environmental impact and ease of handling.

Our extruded polystyrene (XPS) achieves even lower thermal conductivity levels – as low as 0.027 W/mK. The unique benefits of XPS consist of high thermal performance and energy efficiency, compressive strength and water resistance. This provides unmatched value in challenging applications such as foundations/perimeters and flat roofs.

Acoustic comfort

Due to its elastic nature, glass mineral wool uniquely combines both thermal and acoustic benefits. It is used as acoustic insulation in a range of applications: partition walls, flooring, acoustic ceilings, external walls and pitched roofs.​

URSA’s products have been subjected to a range of acoustic testing across European markets and have been proven to offer excellent acoustic insulation. Depending on the application tested, systems with our products achieved a sound-reduction potential of 40 to 80 decibels.

Fire safety

URSA’s glass mineral wool products offer very high standards of fire safety. They have been proven to contain fire and prevent its spread, as well as produce a low quantity of smoke. These high-performance characteristics have earned our glass mineral wool products the A1 and A2 ratings (out of seven categories) in the European Reaction to Fire (Euro classes) classification system. These are the best results among most common insulation materials.​

The fire-resistance rating of a structure is identified by the REI class. This determines how long, in minutes, a construction element can preserve its mechanical resistance, its integrity against flames and gases, and its thermal insulation. Certain constructions using our glass mineral wool products have achieved REI 120, meaning they can resist fire for 120 minutes.

Indoor air quality

The quality of indoor air is becoming a key concern across Europe because it affects people’s health.

URSA’s insulation materials offer best-in-class levels of indoor air comfort.

Thanks to our long-term product development and innovation efforts, the following internationally recognized certification schemes have been accredited to our insulation materials as a result of their ultra-low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions:

• Indoor Air Comfort Gold and Indoor Air Comfort levels (certified by Eurofins)​
• Highest rating (A+) in the French VOC labeling scheme
• M1 level in the Finnish emissions certification scheme​
• Blue Angel certification in Germany

Ease of handling

URSA’s satisfied customers are installing our glass mineral wool and extruded polystyrene (XPS) products on a daily basis. They know that our insulation materials are truly user-friendly and help them complete projects more quickly and easily. For example, our glass mineral wool is highly compressible and offers unique benefits:​

• Easy and fast transportation of products to the building site
• No need for time-consuming measurements while cutting​
• Fills cavities fully to avoid thermal and acoustic bridges, contributing to superior thermal and acoustic performance

Research carried out in Austria shows that using glass mineral wool can save more than 40% on installation time compared to higher-density, non-compressible mineral wool products.

The installation of URSA’s materials is fast and clean. URSA’s products are soft and non-irritating. They achieve the best classification in terms of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, making them safe for installers and final users. URSA offers installation training and free installation advisory services.

Recycling

Recycled and recyclable. Both URSA glass mineral wool and XPS are designed to be environmentally friendly.

We strongly support the European Union’s strategy for a circular economy and the commitment to reducing waste and minimizing the use of natural resources by recycling.

Using recycled materials helps to reduce the use of virgin raw materials in production process. This leads to a more efficient use of natural resources. Ideally, final products can be re-used in different applications, or can be re-introduced into the production process like in the case of production waste. This improves the life cycle impact of our materials by reducing the impact on the environment.

Both URSA’s glass mineral wool and extruded polystyrene (XPS) support this concept.

For our glass mineral wool, we use recycled glass (consumer glass waste and car industry glass) as our raw material. We also re-channel our production waste back into our production processes. And we are developing concepts and practices to use glass wool waste from demolition as input material for our production.

For our XPS, the major input material is polystyrene. We have been at the forefront of the industry to enable our manufacturing plants, together with recycling partners, to use up to 80% recycled polystyrene for specific product groups as input material. This recycled polystyrene comes from sources such as food industry boxes and consumer packaging, helping to reduce waste disposal and incineration. And as with our glass mineral wool, we also re-use our own XPS production waste as input material.