Industries

Most of the larger US chemical concerns are engaged in the products of plastic polymers and raw material chemicals for flexible plastic foams.

These firms control the pricing and supply aspects for the industry’s chemical processing foam plants.
Early in the industry’s approx. 70 year history, some firms were engaged in the practice of producing chemicals and/or chemical processing raw foam product and in engineering, applying, and fabricating finished product direct to the market place.

Over time, it became apparent that these practices are really three distinct industry functions.  Each industry requiring different equipment, facilities, and product knowledge so no one firm was very competitive, efficient, effective or had any economic efficiencies  to perform more than one of these functions for the most part.

Three Industry Functions

1. Raw Chemical Production companies   
      Firms such as Dow Chemical, Union Carbide, etc.
2. Chemical Processing companies 
      Raw material production from approx 150 US firms.
3. Fabrication and distributing companies –
      Such as Wisconsin Foam Products with application oriented engineered product to
                  varying O.E.M. specifications.

For the last 20 years the industry has changed by the closing of and consolidation of many chemical processing plants and owned distributing plants which were offering limited product lines.  This helped the evolving independent fabricating and distributing companies such as Wisconsin Foam by allowing the ability to buy the raw material from all the chemical processors and being able to choose the most efficient and highest quality product lines. This abililty to purchase from various foam processors and purchase the best material allows Wisconsin Foam Products ability to offer the best that the flexible foam industry has to offer all under one roof.

In this changing environment, the independent fabricator is able to “level the playing field” by creating competition between chemical producers and foam processors to bring the best value to the market.