The Urethane Blog

Everchem Updates

VOLUME XXI

September 14, 2023

Everchem’s Closers Only Club

Everchem’s exclusive Closers Only Club is reserved for only the highest caliber brass-baller salesmen in the chemical industry. Watch the hype video and be introduced to the top of the league: read more

February 15, 2022

Wood Structural Panel Primer

Look for quality mark on wood structural panels

By Larry Adams February 14, 2022 | 9:55 am CST

TACOMA, Wash. — When ordering or specifying wood structural panels, it is important to receive the right panel for the application, and equally important that the panel is manufactured with the required quality, according to the APA – The Engineered Wood Association.

Wood structural panels trademarked by APA meet both criteria, based on qualification tests in compliance with Product Standards PS 1 for plywood and PS 2 for plywood and oriented strand board (OSB), as well as on-going quality assurance tests on every production period with a robust quality assurance system. In Canada, APA panels are trademarked to similar standards, which include CSA O121 for Douglas fir plywood, CSA O151 for Canadian softwood plywood and CSA O325 for OSB and plywood.

APA’s Quality Assurance System
APA’s quality assurance system includes review of mill quality procedures, independent third-party audits of the mill quality program and regular independent testing that verifies the quality and performance of wood structural panels. Also, APA’s quality assurance system has proactive steps to ensure any product quality issues are addressed promptly and properly in the manufacturing plant.

APA-certified products are authorized to bear a trademark clearly identifying the appropriate standard and product application. The qualification and quality assurance system apply evaluation methods that are appropriate for many end-use applications, including span ratings for roof, wall and floor construction, and for a wide variety of other uses, such as in concrete forming, upholstered furniture frames, recreational vehicles and other manufactured products where materials with high strength-to-weight ratios, durable exterior adhesives and known mechanical properties are important. 

Occasionally, imported wood structural panels are sold in North America. Those imported panels may be manufactured with foreign wood species of a low density or with adhesives of unknown durability, or they may be qualified by testing to a foreign standard that is not developed and intended for North American markets. Furthermore, the in-plant quality program, and especially the independent third-party quality assurance system of imported panels might be untested and unproven in North America.

In the past, APA has been asked to evaluate imported panels available in local markets by testing them with requirements specified in PS 1 and PS 2. In some cases, the panels were found to be lacking in stiffness and bond quality and emitting formaldehyde in excess of certified products conforming to North American standards. 

Formaldehyde regulations and structural wood products
Since North American structural wood products produced under the PS 1 and PS 2 standards are designed for construction applications governed by building codes, they are manufactured only with moisture-resistant adhesives that meet Exterior or Exposure 1 bond classifications.

These adhesives, such as phenol formaldehyde and diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI), are chemically reacted into stable bonds during pressing. The final products have such low formaldehyde emission levels that they easily meet or are exempt from the world’s leading formaldehyde emission standards and regulations.

Learn more about formaldehyde emission standards and regulations for structural wood products.  Specifying APA-trademarked panels manufactured by trusted North American manufacturers is an assurance of getting the right product for the right application at a recognized quality level.

For more information, visit https://www.apawood.org.

https://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/news/look-quality-mark-wood-structural-panels

February 14, 2022

Tupelo Furniture Market

Back to Basics: Downsized Tupelo Furniture Market to have first event since 2020

1 of 2

TUPELO • For the first time since 2020, the Tupelo Furniture Market is hosting an industry trade show. The Winter Market will be an abbreviated one, starting Wednesday and wrapping up Friday. 

“We’re getting back to the basics,” said TFM Chairman V.M. Cleveland. “We’re not going to have the awards ceremonies or the free buffets or entertainment or anything like that. We’re just going to match up the vendors with the buyers and retailers and just do business like the way we started 35 years ago.”

The market’s last trade show was the summer market of 2020. It skipped all of last year over concerns with the pandemic, although High Point and Las Vegas had their markets. Cleveland said Tupelo wasn’t in a position to host a market, however.

“We really didn’t want people from 40-50 states exposed to COVID or bringing COVID here to us,” he said. “But the industry itself was part of the reason, because the delivery times for a lot of manufacturers went from 30 days to 60 days to 90 days to six months or more.”

The slow delivery times made hosting a market with something new to show difficult, if not impossible.

“What were we going to show?” he said. “You might be getting something by the time the second show came around if you were lucky, and most people didn’t want to take part in that. It was hard to justify a market. Vegas and High Point had markets, but they weren’t great.”

Supply chain disruptions did cause some manufacturers to push back delivery schedules. That affected smaller companies the most — the ones that most often show in Tupelo.

Still, it was a difficult decision to make for a market that had held consecutive twice-yearly markets since 1987.

“So we’ll do a little market this year because we have vendors who said they can ship, and this market is for them,” Cleveland said. “We’re not going to drag it out over the weekend – it’ll be a compact three days for the vendors who contacted us, and it’ll be all business.”

Debbie Henry, the market’s director of sales, said retailers and exhibitors alike expressed an interest in having a winter market.

“We knew in order to have something for them worth coming for, we had to have at least 50 vendors, which made sense,” she said. “We thought it would be difficult, but we have 75 with no problem at all, and we could have 100 by the time it opens.”

Henry said the market recruited companies that could ship product within weeks. It didn’t go after companies that couldn’t ship until a few months down the road.

“The beauty of this smaller market is that the vendors who are here can ship their products in the normal four to six weeks,” she said. “I think that will be a good draw for the market.”

https://www.djournal.com/news/business/back-to-basics-downsized-tupelo-furniture-market-to-have-first-event-since-2020/article_25bda0bd-a2de-58ad-a329-db712c7e3246.html

February 14, 2022

Tupelo Furniture Market

Back to Basics: Downsized Tupelo Furniture Market to have first event since 2020

1 of 2

TUPELO • For the first time since 2020, the Tupelo Furniture Market is hosting an industry trade show. The Winter Market will be an abbreviated one, starting Wednesday and wrapping up Friday. 

“We’re getting back to the basics,” said TFM Chairman V.M. Cleveland. “We’re not going to have the awards ceremonies or the free buffets or entertainment or anything like that. We’re just going to match up the vendors with the buyers and retailers and just do business like the way we started 35 years ago.”

The market’s last trade show was the summer market of 2020. It skipped all of last year over concerns with the pandemic, although High Point and Las Vegas had their markets. Cleveland said Tupelo wasn’t in a position to host a market, however.

“We really didn’t want people from 40-50 states exposed to COVID or bringing COVID here to us,” he said. “But the industry itself was part of the reason, because the delivery times for a lot of manufacturers went from 30 days to 60 days to 90 days to six months or more.”

The slow delivery times made hosting a market with something new to show difficult, if not impossible.

“What were we going to show?” he said. “You might be getting something by the time the second show came around if you were lucky, and most people didn’t want to take part in that. It was hard to justify a market. Vegas and High Point had markets, but they weren’t great.”

Supply chain disruptions did cause some manufacturers to push back delivery schedules. That affected smaller companies the most — the ones that most often show in Tupelo.

Still, it was a difficult decision to make for a market that had held consecutive twice-yearly markets since 1987.

“So we’ll do a little market this year because we have vendors who said they can ship, and this market is for them,” Cleveland said. “We’re not going to drag it out over the weekend – it’ll be a compact three days for the vendors who contacted us, and it’ll be all business.”

Debbie Henry, the market’s director of sales, said retailers and exhibitors alike expressed an interest in having a winter market.

“We knew in order to have something for them worth coming for, we had to have at least 50 vendors, which made sense,” she said. “We thought it would be difficult, but we have 75 with no problem at all, and we could have 100 by the time it opens.”

Henry said the market recruited companies that could ship product within weeks. It didn’t go after companies that couldn’t ship until a few months down the road.

“The beauty of this smaller market is that the vendors who are here can ship their products in the normal four to six weeks,” she said. “I think that will be a good draw for the market.”

https://www.djournal.com/news/business/back-to-basics-downsized-tupelo-furniture-market-to-have-first-event-since-2020/article_25bda0bd-a2de-58ad-a329-db712c7e3246.html

February 11, 2022

Tosoh Names New President

Tosoh appoints new president
February 11/2022
MOSCOW (MRC) — Japanese chemicals company Tosoh Corp has appointed Mamoru Kuwada as its new president and representative director, effective 1 March, said the company.

Kuwada is currently executive vice president of Tosoh and president of Tosoh’s Specialty Group. In his new role,  Kuwada succeeds Toshinori Yamamoto, who will become a corporate advisor to the company after the annual general meeting in June.

“Implementation of the company’s fiscal 2023 medium-term business plan will be overseen by a new management team, with the aim of further strengthening its earnings and business foundation and achieving further growth,” Tosoh said.

Tosh is a large chlor-alkali producer and it supplies ethylene, polyethylene, and functional polymers. It also has an advanced materials business that serves the global semiconductor, display, and solar industries.

As MRC informed earlier, Tosoh Corporation, a major Japanese petrochemical producer, has announced it will permanently stop producing and selling toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and TDI-related products from its Nanyo complex in Japan, effective April 2023. Despite the continuous implementation of measures to improve profitability, the environment surrounding this business has become increasingly severe in recent years, and there are no prospects for improvement, the company stated. Tosoh currently produce 25,000 t/y of TDI at the site.

As MRC reported earlier, Tosoh resumed normal production at its caustic soda plant in Nanyo City (Nanyo, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan) with the capacity of 1.188 million tons of caustic soda and 1.06 million tons of chlorine per year on June 24, 2021. The company experienced some technical issues when restarting after a scheduled repair. Since June 12, the caustic and chlorine production capacity utilisation was reduced by about 30%.

Founded in 1935, Japan’s Tosoh Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, is an international chemicals and specialty materials company. The main activity of the company is the production of chlor-alkali and petrochemical products, which include ethylene, propylene, polypropylene, polyethylene and synthetic rubbers. The Tosoh Group globally includes over 130 companies with manufacturing facilities and offices in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, UK, Greece, Switzerland and the USA.

http://www.mrcplast.com/news-news_open-399072.html

February 11, 2022

Tosoh Names New President

Tosoh appoints new president
February 11/2022
MOSCOW (MRC) — Japanese chemicals company Tosoh Corp has appointed Mamoru Kuwada as its new president and representative director, effective 1 March, said the company.

Kuwada is currently executive vice president of Tosoh and president of Tosoh’s Specialty Group. In his new role,  Kuwada succeeds Toshinori Yamamoto, who will become a corporate advisor to the company after the annual general meeting in June.

“Implementation of the company’s fiscal 2023 medium-term business plan will be overseen by a new management team, with the aim of further strengthening its earnings and business foundation and achieving further growth,” Tosoh said.

Tosh is a large chlor-alkali producer and it supplies ethylene, polyethylene, and functional polymers. It also has an advanced materials business that serves the global semiconductor, display, and solar industries.

As MRC informed earlier, Tosoh Corporation, a major Japanese petrochemical producer, has announced it will permanently stop producing and selling toluene diisocyanate (TDI) and TDI-related products from its Nanyo complex in Japan, effective April 2023. Despite the continuous implementation of measures to improve profitability, the environment surrounding this business has become increasingly severe in recent years, and there are no prospects for improvement, the company stated. Tosoh currently produce 25,000 t/y of TDI at the site.

As MRC reported earlier, Tosoh resumed normal production at its caustic soda plant in Nanyo City (Nanyo, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan) with the capacity of 1.188 million tons of caustic soda and 1.06 million tons of chlorine per year on June 24, 2021. The company experienced some technical issues when restarting after a scheduled repair. Since June 12, the caustic and chlorine production capacity utilisation was reduced by about 30%.

Founded in 1935, Japan’s Tosoh Corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, is an international chemicals and specialty materials company. The main activity of the company is the production of chlor-alkali and petrochemical products, which include ethylene, propylene, polypropylene, polyethylene and synthetic rubbers. The Tosoh Group globally includes over 130 companies with manufacturing facilities and offices in Japan, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Italy, UK, Greece, Switzerland and the USA.

http://www.mrcplast.com/news-news_open-399072.html