A FLOORING company which recycles parquet flooring from disused buildings into stunning new floors is to create at least 46 new jobs.

Eco Flooring & Restoration UK, run by firefighter Jim Sanderson has attracted potential orders worth more than £1 million and is busy creating 12 teams of three people throughout the country, as well as taking on up to ten more people at his workshops in Hodgson Lane, Poppleton, where he already employs four people.

This surge in business was sparked by the Grand Designs 2012 exhibition at London ExCel in May, after which he signed £333,000 worth of new contracts in the first month.

Jim had recently bought all the French oak parquet flooring from a chateau which was being gutted near the Palace of Versailles. The wood, which dates back to 1850, has been in great demand, with one order to refloor five floors of a building in central London reaching £91,000.

It hasn’t been an easy year though, said Jim, whose friend Gary McGloughlin, training officer for the Soldier On charity which Eco-Flooring & Restoration UK sponsors, had to man the stand for him at the exhibition after he injured his shoulder.

Jim said: “It stopped me in my tracks.”

But as he prices up dozens more quotes his fortunes are looking up and Jim is now entering Growth Business Of The Year and Think Green Business Of The Year titles in The Press Business Awards 2012.

Jim was a winner in The Press’s Local Business Accelerators competition when he impressed judges with his commitment and passion, attracting Olympic contracts and working at TV broadcaster Sarah Beeney’s Georgian mansion in Hull for her Restoration Nightmares series.

Jim has calculated that his business has so far spared the equivalent of 1,500 trees from the axe through recycling, and to further extend its green credentials he has developed a new product from the business’s own waste.

Powder and shavings left from sanding the wood are now made into a secondary product, Ecowoodfiller, a filler for antique wood.