Sep 16 2006
In May of 2006, BASF joined forces with a number of major foam processors in Italy, establishing a quality group with the objective of implementing continuous quality control to ensure that BASF’s raw material Neopor® will be used to make high-quality thermal insulation panels for the Italian market. To this end, the participating companies have also jointly designed a quality seal. Along with BASF – which was responsible for developing this concept – the founding members of this group include BASF’s customers Apemilano Spa (Milan), Gruppo Poron (Nettuno), Lape Srl (Florence) and L’Isolante Srl (Mantua).
“We want to assist our direct customers in Italy, working with them in an endeavour to promote the manufacture of quality products so as to offer final customers a durable high-grade insulation material that exhibits consistent properties,” explains Dr. Juergen Fischer, market development manager for Neopor at BASF in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
The partner companies purchase BASF’s expandable raw material Neopor in the form of beads and use it to make various products for the insulation material market. All participants have agreed to allow regular, unannounced quality inspections to be conducted at their production facilities by an independent outside agency, namely, the Thermal Protection Research Institute (FIW) of Munich, Germany. These random inspections will look for compliance with the λ-value stipulated in EU standard EN 13163, which is a measure of the thermal conductivity of insulation panels, as well as compliance with various mechanical properties such as the compressive strength. When all of the criteria have been fulfilled, the products receive the new quality seal, which consists of BASF’s familiar combined mark for Neopor foam plus the addition of the text “FIW-approved insulation”. This certificate is only displayed on those insulation products that have passed all of the tests and it is withdrawn if a member of the quality group repeatedly fails to meet the quality criteria.
With these strict measures, the group is aiming to lay the quality foundation for insulation panel production in Italy and would like to see this become the standard. So far, there has been no association of this type that has assumed such a verifiable self-imposed obligation. Its intention is to provide the Italian construction industry as well as architects, energy consultants and private customers with the maximum reliability for the insulation products they purchase.
Neopor is BASF’s new, silver-grey insulation material on the basis of EPS (expanded polystyrene) and it exhibits a particularly good thermal insulating effect. Tiny infrared absorbers that have been incorporated into the material ensure that a panel made of Neopor reflects the heat radiation almost completely. BASF has been selling Neopor throughout Europe for about six years now and is also investing in the future by further developing this material, which enjoys long-term patent protection.