Hickory Springs names bio foam
By Furniture Today Staff -- Furniture Today, March 27, 2006
Conover, N.C. — Hickory Springs has named and put into limited production a new upholstery and bedding foam made from biological raw materials, rather than non-renewable petrochemicals.
The product, using materials from Cargill, will be marketed under the trade name Preserve. Hickory Springs expects to announce at the High Point market in April which furniture and bedding companies will market the first products using the new foam.
The new product comes at a time of rising petroleum prices and concerns about raw material availability after last year's Gulf Coast hurricanes interrupted the flow of chemicals used to make foam.
It is Hickory Springs' first foray into the creation of flexible polyurethane foam that replaces a portion of its petrochemical-based ingredients with a material made from a sustainable, renewable resource. The company said that it provides cushioning that is comparable, if not better, in quality and performance to oil-based foams.
"Our goal is to find new uses of resources and to avoid the waste that has been part of our industry's history," said Bobby Bush, vice president of foam and environmental technology for Hickory Springs.
"Not only is Preserve, which incorporates bio-based polyol as an active ingredient, an attempt to lessen our dependence on oil, it is also an opportunity to steer our industry's thinking away from its short-term mindset," he said. "This gesture may be small in impact, but we feel that Preserve is the initial step in what would be an arduous but fruitful move by the foam industry away from dependence on a product in short supply."
While the concept is not new, the company said the product previously has been out of reach due to constraints of economy and technology.
