FCS is soon to be the new manufacturer of Eskimo Foam in china for export to the US and …
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FCS is soon to be the new manufacturer of Eskimo Foam in china for export to the US and …
Heard about this on friday…interesting
Also heard that all the foam will be premixed before going to China so the formula cant be stolen.
if they are sourcing the materials and mixing them in Australia why send it to China? Isn’t the point of outsourcing to have the cheap labor do the work, seems like alot of extra work mix, load,unload in China just so they can pour the blank and ship it somewhere else.
Guess their going to have the Chinese do the rest of the labor. Keeping the formula a secret from the Chinese is a good idea i think.
Ahmmm - a number of problems with that;
First off, in the chem lab I used to work in, in an underfunded junior college, I could analyse anything like polyurethane foam and figure out what was in it; right down to the last isomer, byproduct and contaminant present.
And the Chinese have lots of better labs, with better equipment and tens if not hundreds of thousands of better analytical chemists than I ever was, on the best day I ever had. It’s not hard. The gadgets to do it with have been around for 40+ years, UV spectroscopes and the like.
Add to that the idea that anybody pouring the chemicals into a mold will have the techniques for that given to 'em…
And that the chemicals have to be in two or more non-reactive components to ship, lest the container they are shipped in suddenly need about 100 times the volume and lest the containership skipper that’s charged with carrying the stuff become very unhappy all of a sudden… as the other containers get popped over the side…
Somebody is living in a cloud-cuckoo-land dream world, like most of the surf industry, if they think that it’s gonna be a secret. Polyurethane foam is 1940s tech, not anything like string theory mathematics. Clark’s mold technology was the key to blank production, and that was 1960 tech.
Personally, I’d be disappointed if they don’t come up with something a helluva lot better…
doc…
doc,
funny you mentioned it. I helped someone get in contact with a reverse-engineering firm that had a SciFinder made just to do iso-polymers. Basically the stuff is dinosaur, the polymer chemists are talking to us like “is that it?” and why so toxic, etc.
What we seem to have are a lot of astute business types just ape-ing what is already there, just so they can “get something out there”. I can’t blame them, look at the success of the former business model. Think about licensing fees for a moment, for let’s say 600 blanks a day. If the fee was $5 per blank (which is very low from what I’ve been hearing), then that would be $3000 per day, every day, 7 days a week, etc.
Consumption is projected to be around 1,500 units per day, so the model could increase from these figures as the aforementioned product has desirable quality! A larger shipping container can hold about 800, so expect 2 containers every 3 days, all year long. Let’s say 20 containers clear customs at a time, now the staging of these blanks becomes an issue. Doing a quick calculation shows that staging these blanks at a receiving/warehouse place takes up more net footprint than MAKING THE BLANKS HERE!
Some thoughts: The reverse chemist’s fee is around 10 days’ worth of licensing. Pouring foam abroad and shipping it, is like shipping air. Other MDI/TDI/urethane products are still being made here in California and looks like they will continue since transport and spillage rather than emission is the main issue. Sending chemicals from toll mixers to far-away places is more risky than sending blanks. The chemicals mostly have origin ties with U.S. companies. Blowing foam is not labor-intensive, this yield is low. People will become aware that the most expensive part of the production process is the cut and glue-up of the stringer. In the past, this took a lot of labor but it does not need to be this way.
The logistical and functional problems surmount from this point, but vary too much from one blank-making effort to another to be worth mentioning. Let us just say that there will eventually be foam cores for building surfboards that will be far superior perhaps in as little as 2 years. Very large companies have stepped in to this effort. This push will have a good chance to dominate the market across a wide spectrum, so the conventional materials have 24 months to make back their investments. Tell that to the VC’s.
It is amazing how one person’s decision could mobilize so many efforts in so many different areas- a true stroke of genius.
Hi Doc,
I’m not up on Chemistry to any extent but what you say about re-engineering capabilities of the Chinese chemists rings true for me.
I have to wonder if the Chinese Government will also either just bribe the Eskimo people out of viability or say:- “How dare you assume you can blow that that toxic shit into OUR airspace…”
Speedneedle
theres a MACT truck coming …
and its not full of blanks …
o if only people paid attention …
mow mow …
regards
BERT
dude, the Chinese can copy anything.
The greatest reverse engineering thief of all time is Microsoft.
Posters here seem to have no problems using their products all the time to access cyberspace to complain about “the others”…
Maybe we all should start boycotting Microsoft products before we start complaining about something as insignificant to how the world works as surfboard foam is…
The whole BB yak yak about such things is such a joke in my opinion…
simple background noise in the larger scheme of things
Just a general comment
we really all here are just nothing
compared to the momentum of the “machine”
So if I’m running Linux on my box and using Firefox as my browser, I can complain all I want?
The question would be what software drives the ISP you are using and what software was used to create the box your are on and created the software you are using… Microsoft is probably in the critical path somewhere in the loop don’t you think?
Kind of like driving a “green” vehicle not considering the amount of carbon waste it took to build it and all the components used to get the “green” fuel into the vehicle in the first place…
We tend to focus on the small things and avoid the big picture cause it’s way to frightening to deal with…
Kind of like being the gold fish in the fish bowl worrying about his next meal not realizing he/she is a captive prisoner in the first place…
BB’s are just electronic versions of the old corner soapboxes with the classic sandwich board “jesus coming soon!” and “it’s the end of the world” hawking going on with any personal reprocussions. The anominity of the platform lessens it’s validity of having any truth… It’s all illusion from the get go. That’s the perspective one must wrap around these electronic binoculars…
We all are gold fish we just don’t want to admit it…
Well, lets see, my ISP is running Apache Server on top of BSD Unix, my box is made by Apple… Damn!
You’re right- my mouse is made by Microsoft!!
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Kind of like driving a “green” vehicle not considering the amount of carbon waste it took to build it and all the components used to get the “green” fuel into the vehicle in the first place…
I like that very much. I wrote something very similar some time ago when everybody was saying how “green” EPS was as compared to PU.
While BLOWING polystyrene into EPS sure is not a big pollution issue, I was wondering about what it took to produce raw polystyrene material since POLYstyrene means you start with STYRENE and have it polymerize, right?
Isn’t styrene one of those materials that are highly suspected of being carcinogenic? Aren’t we all advised to be very careful and to wear a mask when glassing because of styrene vapors? Still, nobody seems concerned about the huge amounts of styrene (a percentage of which has to go into the atmosphere) involved in the production of those billions of tons of EPS…
That would be funny if it was not a bit frightening… Especially since nobody talks about it…
(Oh,and sorry if this is not directly related to Eskimo and China.)
What the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) says about it :
http://www-cie.iarc.fr/htdocs/monographs/vol19/styrene%26polymers.html
http://www-cie.iarc.fr/htdocs/monographs/vol60/m60-06.htm
In any case, one should always wear a mask when sanding or planing a blank, wether it be EPS, XPS or PU in order to avoid getting foam dust in his lungs.
Wow One - Well said. I like seeing this side of you. Not just sweet surf craft construction, but some serious, as it were/is, philosphy. It’s all so true… I liked the one about just buying a board and spending more time surfing… If only we had consistant waves around here.
Oh yeah - I will keep up the quest to use foam from the lumber yard, or… anywhere I can find it for low$$$. And try not to… oh heck, I’m doing the best I can with the tools I got. Taylor
Doc and Oneula, brilliance.
This might interest some of you…
finished shortboard blank outta 1lb eps =~1lb. All polystyrene.
amount of polyester resin used in the glassing/hotcoating and glossing of similar shaped board out of PU =~ 2lb including wastage.
Polyester resin is often as much as 50% w/w styrene…assuming this
then it’s safe to say that whether made out of PU or EPS, the same amount of styrene goes in to both boards…
difference being that polymerization of styrene happens in controlled reactors where people are subject to pretty strict environmental controls.
glassing with polyester resin rarely has those same controls in place; glass shops vented through stacks with semi-effective scrubbers, etc. not to mention the amount of styrene that’s lost out of the resin due to evaporation.
Used to work at a plant where I’d be responsible for 200 drum sized batches of polyester resin. The plant REEKED of styrene…I’d be emanating it from my pores for hours after getting home.
I think that companies approach the use of chemicals differently when they’re considered a “monomer” or “component” of the product or “just a diluent”. Alot easier to excercise environmental controls at a couple of major potential points of pollution versus a ton of little glass shops (be they surfboards, or auto, or boats…whatever) leaching styrene into the atmosphere…
my 2 cts.
GreatWhiteNorth, thanks a lot for explaining things very clearly. I just hope that what you say about those “controlled reactors” is true.