Keeping Cool In Uxbridge | Foam Concepts pads products, helps make buildings more efficient
For this installment of Industrial Strength, I got to go to one of my favorite towns in Central Massachusetts: Uxbridge. There, I checked out a company that makes some of the most recognizable, but overlooked products that comes with any number of household goods.
If you’ve purchased a television or almost any other piece of consumer electronics, you’ve seen Foam Concepts Inc.’s products when you unpacked it. The foam pieces that protect the product inside the box are part of what the 25-year-old company does.
The foam coolers emblazoned with team or other types of logos? Foam concepts makes those, too.
But while these products are instantly recognizable, a big part of the company’s business these days is in construction.
According to Philip Michaelson, the company’s co-founder, the company is at the forefront of a technique used for building high-efficiency structures. Foam Concepts makes foam concrete forms into which concrete is poured. Any kind of siding, stucco, vinyl, etc. can be applied to the outside. The resulting structure is very strong and very well insulated.
Because polystyrene foam is such a good insulator, the company also makes packaging for pharmaceutical and other medical uses and for transporting fish. The variety is astounding considering all of this is done at a 135,000-square-foot facility just off Rivulet Street in Uxbridge.
The company has owned and used the facility since 2000 and moved all its operations there when its 80,000-square-foot space at the Bernat Mill downtown burned down in 2007.
Steam Pressure
The process to make all this stuff is really pretty cool, and involves a lot of steam.
Giant bags of granulated polystyrene are delivered to Foam Concepts from suppliers like BASF and others.
The granules are kind of like sugar, and they’re not ready to be molded.
First, the polystyrene is put into something called a batch expander, where the pellets are agitated and heated with steam.
When the steam hits the polystyrene, it expands, almost like popcorn, Michaelson explained. To give you an idea of how much it expands, it goes from about 40 lbs. per square foot to about 1.5 lbs. per square foot in the expander.
But even after that, the polystyrene’s not ready to be molded.
From the expander, the foam is distributed to silos to age. The aged foam is smoother and easier to mold and manage.
All this movement is computer controlled from touch screens. Once the material is aged, mold operators can call for foam, and the computer will direct material from the appropriate silo through a system of tubes to the waiting molder.
Once at a molding machine, the material is put into a mold, which is heated by steam. In about 30 seconds, the new foam products are shaped and ready.
Michaelson said that when the company moved to Rivulet Street, it made a commitment to be as efficient as possible. It recycles all the water used in the manufacturing process as well as the gas emitted during molding.
Even foam scraps from the factory floor and collected from the community are ground up and mixed with new polystyrene to make new products.
That’s a long way from the company’s humble beginnings. Michaelson and co-founder Mark Villamaino both worked for a plastics manufacturer in Putnam, Conn., that changed hands repeatedly. At the time of one acquisition in the mid-1980s, the duo could see the writing on the wall, Michaelson said.
They bought some old molding equipment from a manufacturer in Mississippi, moved it to Uxbridge and started Foam Concepts.
“We starved for the first three years, but then it was like flipping a switch. What they say about taking three years to start selling is true,” Michaelson said.
Got news for our Industrial Strength column? E-mail WBJ Managing Editor Matthew L. Brown at mbrown@wbjournal.com
Due to a technical error, there is no video to accompany this edition of Industrial Strength.
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