PHOTO: Alan and Dale Richards of Kasodur in the company’s compounding plant in Wellington. Kasodur moved to the Boland town because ambient conditions (hot and dry, most of the time) were suitable for PU processing, but it has evolved steadily and now also produces TPEs and TPRs for a wide range of applications

KASODUR has been chasing the sun … but not to get a tan. The polyurethane manufacturer needs warm, dry conditions for the curing of the range of polyurethane materials it manufactures.

With the production of thermoplastic PUs being its main activity, until recently at least, Kasodur has moved from Durban, where it was originally based, to Clanwilliam in the Cederberg in the Western Cape and then to Parow in Cape Town before settling in nicely at Wellington, about 80kms from Cape Town, where it’s all come together. Kasodur manufactures a range of Kasothan TPU materials as well as adhesives. Wellington offers suitable weather, infrastructure and proximity to market, so Alan and Dale Richards, the father-and-son team at Kasodur, with colleague and fellow shareholder Les Sparks, were at first very content to have found a suitable situation to conduct their business.  But they had no sooner settled in at their Boland premises than the market began to shift.

Warning signs that the TPU market was undergoing change turned to reality, and part of the Richards’ problem was that they were offering their Kasothan grades at a price advantage. Possible? They were surprised that TPU customers seemed locked in to the higher prices of imported materials, even though the Richards’ team believed their TPUs were at least on a quality par with the imported materials. Where downward pressure on price is standard in the markets for virtually all other polymer materials, it appears polyurethanes users distrust lower priced options.

Besides that, and probably even more seriously, it also began to appear that the local TPU market was shrinking. The main portion of the South Africa’s estimated consumption of 1300 tons p/a of TPU goes into the production of screens for the mining sector, and with the commodities boom over – at least for the time being – demand from the mines was on the way down.

The Kasodur team needed to come up with solutions, and quickly. Fortunately for the company, the installed capacity and standard and flexibility of the machinery at the Wellington plant gave the opportunity to diversify. The market had shifted to thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) and thermoplastic rubbers (TPRs). With a large portion of these materials being imported, there was some scope for local manufacture. Using their established expertise in TPU dating back to 1991, Kasodur had no problem adjusting its formulations and machine settings. Plus, its investment in NO! advanced blending systems, in the form of Maguire gravimetric technology (a new underwater die face cutter/pelletising/extrusion line) meant there was hardly a hiccup in the transition. At last, some payback for the commitment to quality systems.

Over successive years, Kasodur has hence added TPEs and TPRs to its range of materials and it now has a range of options for virtually every application where flexibility is required. You need to be flexible in business, and Kasodur is now doing that seriously.

These materials are used in an extremely wide range of applications, in many cases in uses which are seldom noticed, such as bearings and seals, connectors, conveyor parts, handles … the list goes on and on.

Specialised sales is hence essential in this market and Kasodur has been working with Greg Daniel of KMA Marketing, a veteran of the TPR/PVC/flexible materials market, which has enabled it to become increasingly competitive in the market.