Major international manufacturers of rubber, TPE and TP compounds: AirBoss, Teknor Apex, Dynamix, PTE, Multibase, GLS, Kraiburg, A. Schulman and Washington Penn.
There are also a large number of smaller, locally active manufacturers and, within rubber compounds, also customers with their own rubber compounding operations. However, the trend is for small and medium-sized component manufacturers to find it difficult to maintain production of rubber compounds within their own operations in the long term, choosing instead to outsource some of their production to HEXPOL Compounding, among others. HEXPOL Compounding’s potential to offer a global concept and cost-effective production of rubber and TPE compounds is highly competitive, compared with local and regional competitors, or the customers’ in-house production operations.
The market for gaskets for plate heat exchangers is dominated by a limited number of major players, among whom HEXPOL Gaskets is a market leader. The largest competitors are the family-owned TRP and the Trelleborg Group. A few OEM manufacturers of plate heat exchangers also have proprietary gasket production operations.
The market for polyurethane wheels is dominated by roughly ten manufacturers, of which HEXPOL is among one of the leading companies. The primary competitors in the European market are Räder-Vogel and Wicke; both are family owned. Together with HEXPOL’s Stellana US, Thombert and Superior are the largest players in the US market.
Numerous minor wheel manufacturers are active on the local level in both markets. The Chinese market is highly fragmented with a large number of manufacturers of polyurethane, plastic, and rubber wheels.