July 2018

48 49 pany. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation. BVM: Congratulations on Chomarat’s milestone anniversary! Can you give us an overview of the North American operations? Laufenberg: “Thank you, we’re turning 120 this year, so we are quite old. The original compa- ny was started in France in 1898 and it’s still a family-owned business –our Group President is fourth generation, and we even have a couple of young people in the fifth generation starting to incorporate into the business. Chomarat started in the U.S. as a joint venture back in 1986.We have three factories in Anderson, South Carolina, and hover around 100 employees.With three plants, that seems like a low number, but a lot of what we do is with big equipment, and most opera- tions are automated. “Our largest is the construction materials plant, where we make what we classify as either scrims or grids – all composite reinforcements. The product we manufacture most is a scrim that goes into cement boards. Say, for example, you’re going to re-do the shower in your bathroom; the optimum way to build that is to use a cement board behind the tile. Close to the surface of those cement boards is a fiberglass scrim materi- al to give the board tensile strength. That’s what we make - in addition to material that goes into CHOMARAT, NA sailcloth, other construction components, even carbon grid reinforcement materials that go into precast concrete. “We typically don’t provide much input into fi- nal part or component design, but often there are performance demand changes from our custom- ers or revisions to code requirements that require us to develop new products.We’re starting to see more applications with seismic requirements in the West, and there are a lot of infrastructure problems across the country, including an obvious need around pilings.We have a great solution for reinforcing pilings with a carbon grid, since it pro- vides great tensile strength and doesn’t corrode when it’s underground or below the water table. “Our second plant in South Carolina, which opened in 2006, produces fiberglass reinforce- ments. Primarily, Rovicore, our trade name for a product family that we sell through distribution for closed mold applications. Fiberglass parts for trucks, boats, even McDonald’s signs, historical- ly, were made with chopper guns and spray-up systems. That process is effective for some ap- plications, but is old school technology. Rovicore allows the infusion of resin in a closed system. It takes you from an open mold process to a closed mold process, so the emissions (styrene, etc.) are mostly eliminated, and you get a higher quality part in the end. A lot of that material ends up in transportation–buses, truck fairings, wind de-