ThermHex Waben, producer of honeycomb cores for economic sandwich panels and parts, is launching a new core. The latest product has a height of 20 mm and cell size of 5 mm. This replaces a larger cell size, with a reduction of almost half.
Such a small cell size leads to a better surface quality and enables the use of the core in even more applications, such as visible interior and exterior surfaces in automotive, as it achieves “Class A” surface quality depending on the skin layer.
This year, ThermHex is celebrating its 10th anniversary and for most of those years delivered around 7% growth per annum. The company produces high quality polypropylene honeycombs for more economic, lightweight sandwich panels and parts for various applications across different industries.
During the past ten years, the company has gone from strength to strength, increasing the number of employees five-fold, and sales increasing by 15% in the past financial year despite the economic downturn due to Covid-19.
ThermHex’s efficient process for continuous production delivers lightweight products at competitive cost.
The polypropylene (PP) honeycomb cores are used wherever high-quality products with an optimum strength to weight ratio are required. This includes automotive, boat, yacht, and shipbuilding, interior and furniture, building and construction, and wind and solar energy and swimming pools.
The company would like to enlarge its network around the globe and is looking for more distributors especially in Europe and the USA. It aims for carbon neutral production of its cores by the end of Q1 in 2021 and has started the transition this year by switching electricity supplier to a renewable source.
Dr Jochen Pflug, CEO of ThermHex, said: “Over the past decade, we have continuously innovated and established a track record in delivering high quality honeycomb cores for a variety of industries.
“We are pleased with what the company has achieved over the past decade and are excited about the future. We offer our customers honeycomb cores which help to produce better and more economic lightweight sandwich panels and parts for different applications. Not only do they reduce weight, they also save costs and are more sustainable.
Our work is ever evolving as we support our customers to ever better meet requirements of weight reduction and a more efficient usage of natural resources. Through weight reduction in structural parts of many products, we can help to reduce the environmental impact and contribute to sustainability.”
Over the past decade, the highlights include:
- Successful introduction of unique, patented continuous production process which meant that for the first time, honeycomb cores could be produced at large scale in a resource and cost-efficient way.
- Upgrading the extruder – almost doubling the output
- Introducing PP honeycombs with very small cell sizes (3 to 5 mm)
- Launched Organosandwich in 2019– a PP honeycomb core with glass fibre PP skin layers, for the automotive industry. The continuously produced sandwich can be functionalised by injection moulding and therefore the finished component can be manufactured within very short cycle times.
- Received certificate DIN ISO 9001:2015
- ThermHex 4.0 Data acquisition and quality control automation
- Celebrating 10 years of production and innovation, constantly setting new milestones in terms of core production, environmental impact and innovation.
- This year ThermHex reached jury level for the prestigious Großer Preis des Mittelstandes award, the most coveted business award in Germany. This is the third consecutive year that ThermHex has been recognised by the Oskar-Patzelt foundation, the awarding body.
Reducing the environmental impact during the production of honeycomb cores and offering a lightweight but stiff core material at competitive prices is central to ThermHex’s design and production process. All honeycomb cores are recyclable, are resistant to moisture, acids and bases (reducing replacement costs), and ThermHex is working towards a CO2 neutral product.
Since July this year, ThermHex has been using green power for the production of its honeycomb cores. The production is based on electricity from renewable sources. The processing and monitoring of the green power supply is certified according to TÜV SÜD CMS Standard 92. This guarantees a reliable and traceable procurement, balancing and delivery of electrical energy from renewable sources.
ThermHex Waben GmbH started its production in 2010 and is a licensee of EconCore NV (Belgium), the technology leader for cost-efficient sandwich material production technologies.