Plymouth Foam adds engineered particle foams

Plymouth Foam is expanding its material offerings and market opportunities with a new category of engineered particle foams for products outside its traditional automotive and packaging uses.

Commonly referred to as bead foam, the Plymouth, Wis.-based company has added expanded polypropylene (EPP) and expanded polyethylene (EPE) to the materials it molds, and in the next 18-24 months will offer expanded thermoplastic urethane (ETPU), which was introduced in 2013 by BASF SE.

Other materials will follow, CEO and President David Bolland said in a telephone interview.

“We know many other particle foams are in development and in R&D rooms right now,” he said. “As they come into play, they will be right behind these first three that are our focus right now.”

Engineered particle foams have some attractive qualities in general. They can be recycled. They resist solvents and chemicals. And, they have a good strength-to-weight ratio.

EPP, in particular, is lightweight, withstands multiple impacts without damage, and provides thermal insulation for temperature-sensitive products like food and medicine. It is used in medical devices, too, and its buoyancy appeal to the marine industry.

EPE has a soft texture ideal for packaging electronic goods with polished surfaces which also cushions fragile items against shock while the market for ETPU, which is light, springy and stretches like rubber, is largely untapped except for the soles of high-end Adidas running shoes called Energy Boost.

The goal is to take these and future engineered particle foams to new levels by exploiting current markets and exploring new ones, according to Bolland.

“We feel it's a natural part of our growth and evolution, and that Plymouth Foam is uniquely qualified to pull that off because we're such a diverse partner to so many industries in our current platform,” he said. “We have the relationship and the trust. We're being invited to discussions that allow us to bring EPP and other engineered particle foams to the table and look at new ways to apply them and solve problems.”

Plymouth Foam opened in 1978 with expanded polystyrene (EPS) as its original material, then got into manufacturing and fabricating foam products from polyethylene, polyurethane and specialty foams Arcel and Neopor. The business targets a variety of markets, such as medical, point-of-purchase displays, toy planes — 1.5 million Air Hog Titans produced to date — structural and non-structural wall assemblies for sunrooms and RVs, and insulation sheets and insulated panels.

The venture into the newer plastics should differentiate Plymouth Foam among its competition in Wisconsin and the Midwest, company officials said. Their initial effort is to find uses for EPP beyond car bumpers, seats, door panels and head rests and then to find new uses for EPE.

“We're making some headway,” George Palmer, vice president of product development, said of EPP on the same telephone conference call. “We're looking in areas where people haven't heard of the material before because it has almost singularly focused on automotive applications so we have an educational process to go through and we need to explain the benefits.”

Palmer points overseas to the possibilities.

“We've had the opportunity to see how the acceptance level has been greater in Europe than here because of the focus on efficiency, energy conservation and generally making things simpler for lack of a better term,” Palmer said.

In Europe, EPP has found “interesting” applications in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning market and in some cases is used as the housing for instantaneous solar water heaters, according to Jason Nehf, vice president of sales and marketing.

“It's also being used as ducting while here in the U.S. when you think of ducts it's mainly steel and aluminum,” he said.

As energy ratings become more stringent in the U.S., Nehf said he thinks EPP could find a home in the U.S. HVAC market.

“Some rules and regulations within HVAC are different here compared to Europe so we'll continue to explore that,” he added.

Plymouth Foam is in the midst of a $5 million facility expansion at its headquarters to provide space for the expanded particle foam business as well as end the need for off-site warehousing of products.

“The materials that we're getting into now have a slightly different requirement in their manufacturing process so we had to put in a new installation of specialized equipment,” Palmer said.

The 115,000-square-foot building addition will almost double the footprint when it is completed by the end of November. Plymouth Foam also has operations in Becker, Minn., and Gnadenhutten, Ohio.