So says David Johnson, sales director of the company that makes West System, Pro-Set and Entropy Resins under license from Gougeon Brothers Inc for marine composite applications.
But even cost challenges are not as significant as supply chain ones, he adds. “Simply ensuring that we have the product to service our customers. It doesn’t matter what the cost is if we can’t make our products. We took the decision to carry more stock of key raw materials when the supply chain disruption began in early 2020, to ensure that we were able to continue to supply our customers.”
He says the company is delighted to see supply of key raw materials coming back online, especially given significant interest in its latest PRO-SET biobased epoxies (tailored specifically for composite manufacturers), but prices remain volatile across the fractured supply chains.
Johnson terms the Pro-Set biobased range as “an inventory of high-performance resins and adhesives”. They’re all based on a product that was previously in a 100% oil-based form. At heart, Pro-Set biobased epoxies are a laminating, infusion and adhesive-based epoxy systems containing with between 24-32% bio content in the resin component. The bio content comes from a waste stream that would otherwise go into landfill.
The Pro-Set bio-based epoxies started evolving pre-pandemic. Johnson observes: “Boat building and yacht engineering is very innovative. But, while it’s open to innovation, the whole bio scene is a slow-burn realisation. People have to trust in products, and that happens over time.
“Boats are being made with flax or basalt and bio-based epoxy, but with all these environmental gains, builders need to feel comfortable with what they’re doing, and that will then translate into confidence for the products to be use widely.”
Noting that epoxy wood construction already has a long lifespan -- providing that the design stays contemporary -- Johnson says the proof of the biobased products will come with time.
He continues: “The mood of everyone is that they’re analysing what they are doing and using biobased epoxy where they can. If boat builders are already creating a vessel with 100 years of integrity in its structure and aesthetics, there’ll need to be a significant reason to change methods.”
“With the formulation modifications, they have a respectable bio content with no loss of properties,” Johnson says.
While he admits that there is a price increase for bio-based (born out of sophisticated chemistry, he contends that builders will soon realise that biobased offers a huge sales advantage to an environmentally-conscious end market.
The bio-based products include systems for infusion through to hand laminating, to assembly adhesives.
