Oct 4 2010
Flame Seal Products, Inc. has made a major shift in its business planning, which required the Company to change its manufacturing focus from liquids to powders.
This required major restructuring during the last quarter, abandoning their new facility, in favor of one located in a more industrialized zone. This is the result of business that has been rapidly developing with Buckman, Flame Seal’s primary distributor in North America.
In recent weeks there has been an increasing number of requests from Plastics Companies, especially in Europe, for Flame Seal’s powder fire resistant additive for plastics. Many such requests have been of a high urgency, and have been heavily prioritized by both Flame Seal and Buckman.
It has been found that this sudden surge of inquiries has been caused by the fact that delays and/or grace periods for environmental regulations that restrict the use of dangerous Brominated Fire Retardant chemical additives in plastics have come to an end.
A recent study at the University of Massachusetts - Lowell demonstrated a high potential of compatibility between Flame Seal’s plastic powder additive and polyetheylene plastics. This impacts a significant segment of the plastics market.
An recent overview of the plastic fire retardant industry, compiled by Craig Keyser of Flame Seal, revealed a $1.25 Billion market in Europe (2007 numbers), with approximately 23% as brominated FR products = $287.5Million. Europe is leading the way today, but as history shows, the U.S. and then the rest of the world will soon follow.
This represents a very large market opportunity for Flame Seal’s powder additive products, which are green technologies that are proving to be able to replace some of the outdated, restricted chemical additives that now must be eliminated.
From the President: “This has progressed in a short time to the point that we are already shipping production run product, and are in the process of setting up monthly deliveries for the first customer. We have been scrambling to shift from liquid production, which was our mode of operations for many years, to dry powder production. This has forced us to find yet another location (done), move, set up, and be in production by mid December!
“There are several other customers that are in various stages of this process, so we are all on high alert here, working hard to keep up with all of this, plus the latest ongoing developments with the SPUF business as well.
“Both businesses require that we remain in our current facility AND move into the new one for powder production.
“I am also working on a complete business report, which will be ready soon. As can be seen, much has changed, and writing such a report has become much more complicated than it was.
“In brief, as many of you realize, we have been fighting a battle in the SPUF insulation market where many companies have tried to derail our efforts, in order to try to buy time to develop something to get in on this lucrative new opportunity. We have worked hard to defeat those efforts, and have that business back on track after several months of re-structuring. Truckload sales, which slowed to a trickle during the time these companies confused the marketplace, are now returning, and things are better than ever.