Facing supply chain disruptions, long lead times, increasing costs in Asia and political instability, more and more companies are looking to onshore products and components previously manufactured overseas.
Developing an Approved Material
GripWorks was tasked with developing or sourcing a Prop 65 approved material which they could utilize to produce foam tubes in three different colors. While experienced in developing foam formulations for a variety of grip and padding applications, the functional, color and compliance requirements associated with this application made it quite challenging.
After testing various materials, a foam blend featuring Mesamoll® was chosen. Mesamoll® is a non-phthalate, well-gelling and exceptionally saponification-resistant universal plasticizer for a wide range of polymers, such as PVC, PUR and rubber.
Color Matching
Armed with a functional and compliant material, the GripWorks team turned to matching the customer’s colors. While the red and blue tubes using the new material matched perfectly, the GripWorks chemist had to experiment with additional pigments to match the customer's required yellow color.
Much to the delight of the customer, rather than matching the yellow, the new yellow was a more robust, better looking product.
Added Benefits
The new material remained easy to print on and GripWorks production facility in St Louis, Missouri was able to reduce lead times significantly.
In fact, GripWorks and the client developed a stocking agreement to ensure consistent delivery of these foam tubes along with some other vinyl grips and foam sculptured grips.
Overall, the move to onshore to a new supplier has proven to be very colorful indeed.
