Hickory Springs upbeat on eco-line
Preserve foam uses soy-based ingredient
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, September 8, 2008
CONOVER, N.C. — CONOVER, N.C. — A quiet revolution played out in test labs at Hickory Springs' foam plant here a couple of years ago. When it was over, and the exhausting rounds of tests and trials and sample batches had come to an end, the scientists and foam experts had produced what they would call, proudly, “the world's first bio-based foam.”
Now that foam, appropriately called Preserve, is poised to take flower as the home furnishings industry gains appreciation for its numerous eco-friendly qualities.
“We believe its time is here,” said Dwayne Welch, executive vice president of sales and marketing at components supplier Hickory Springs. “It's not a fad or a trend.”
Preserve introduces a soy-based ingredient that is a natural and renewable component of the foam, as an alternative to some of the petroleum-based ingredients used in the product. It helps Hickory Springs reduce energy consumption and global warming, company officials say.
According to the company, Preserve foams are currently saving almost 18,000 barrels of oil per year — enough energy to power more than 1,125 homes per year. And those figures are going to grow as furniture and bedding producers add the foams to more of their products, officials say.
Hickory Springs, which developed Preserve foam with food and agriculture giant Cargill, is expanding its portfolio of Preserve products. It has already added Preserve HR, a high-resilience foam, and Preserve Rx, a memory foam that offers “the prescription for sleep.”
After additional lab work, the company has developed a second-generation product, Preserve G2, which has almost twice the natural content of the first-generation foams.
Bold goal: Eliminate oil
The bold goal of the Preserve program: Eliminate all petrochemical products from the foams and replace them with natural and renewable resources.
Foams used widely in the bedding and furniture industries traditionally consist of a high percentage of “petro polyols.”
The first generation of Preserve products cut the percentage of petroleum-based products from 60% to 47%, while introducing natural polyols fashioned from soybeans as 12% of the foam. The second-generation Preserve products cut the petrochemical contribution to 40%, while upping the percentage of natural materials to 20%.
Hickory Springs is now working on the next generation of Preserve products.
Company officials say the Preserve program is part of a bio-industrial revolution sweeping the nation and the world. They say the introduction of bio-foams marks the biggest change in the polyurethane industry in decades.
“When we started on this in 2003, we saw this as an opportunity to make a difference in our industry,” said Dimitrios Dounis, corporate director of marketing and foam research. “Look at the popularity of hybrid cars. We are all trying to reduce our impact on the earth.”
Bobby Bush, a veteran Hickory Springs executive, got the ball on the Preserve project rolling when the idea of developing bio-foams was first broached in 2003 by Cargill. Bush said Hickory Springs wanted to be part of that effort, and the two companies created a joint development team.
“Hickory Springs was the leader of this effort,” said Welch. “We saw this. We went to Cargill. But we didn't just do this for Hickory Springs. This was for the whole industry.”
The project was designed to supplement the petrochemical supply chain with one that is friendlier to the environment. The United States is the world's largest producer of soybeans, and oils extracted from soybeans are highly efficient in yielding the chemicals used in foams. In addition, the cost of the soybean oil supply chain is one-fifth of the cost of the petro-chemical supply chain, Hickory Springs officials said. And soybean oil is much less sensitive to supply and price fluctuations than petrochemicals.
Comfort a plus
In addition to all of those earth-friendly benefits, the Preserve foams possess several customer benefits as well, the officials said. Preserve foams offer improved comfort, “hand,” flammability characteristics and color-retention qualities — an especially important feature for the bedding producers who continue to favor light-colored mattress ticking, officials said.
Performance tests also showed that Preserve foams are more durable than conventional foams, and that means fewer body impressions in mattresses, the company said.
Hickory Springs is pouring Preserve foams at its Conover, N.C., plant, where production began in 2006, and at its facilities in Verona, Miss., and Commerce, Calif., where production began late last year. Production will be expanded to other Hickory Springs facilities in the near future.
The cost of Preserve foams is currently higher than for traditional polyurethane foams, but the gap has been decreasing as oil costs have escalated. And Preserve has already found some notable successes in the upholstery industry, where
Lee Inds. and Norwalk are among the upholstered furniture producers using the foam. On the mattress side, customers currently include Natura World, Therapedic Canada and Murmaid Mattress.
“This is a huge opportunity,” said David Duncan, national product manager for bedding foam products at Hickory Springs. “Consumers are more forward-thinking today. There is a feel-good factor with this product. The performance of Preserve is as good or better than other foams, and you are supporting the environment. The bedding industry is looking for sizzle. This offers great sizzle.”
Added Dounis, “It is sizzle, but with some steak, too. We are reducing our dependence on oil, but not sacrificing product performance.”
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