Posted April 27, 2015
By John McCurry
Alexium International, based in Greer, S.C., is poised to launch new products this year and accelerate growth. Company management said its scale-up in 2014 demonstrated that its chemistries are easy to apply during manufacturing and help add strength and durability to fabrics.
Formed to promote reactive surface treatment technology originally developed by the U.S. Air Force in response to chemical and biological warfare threats, the company has slowly developed since picking Greer for its operations in 2010. Since then, it has gradually built its staff and narrowed its focus, which since 2012 has been on full development of flame-retardant (FR) products.
Alexium’s progress comes as the FR market is in great flux. A movement is under way by customers to eliminate bromines, a longtime component of FR, from products. This is driven by increasing customer awareness and potential regulations that encourage development of FR products that are friendly to the environment. Venerable products are being pulled off European and U.S. markets or may soon be pulled. New legislation severely restricts or eliminates the use of many brominated/halogenated compounds. Alexium promotes the fact that its FR coatings are environmentally friendly and do not contain harmful compounds that exist in other FR products. Alexium’s FR products do not include halogen, formaldehyde or heavy metals, the company said.
Thus far, Alexium has supplied FR treatments for textiles to more than 20 customers. It is working with nine customers in scale-up stages and it has reached commercial production with three of them.
Pushing the envelope on chemistries
Not only is Alexium a young company, it is staffed with relatively young, yet experienced managers. eTextileCommunications (eTC) recently spoke with a couple of them to get their perspective on where the company is headed.
POISED FOR GROWTH
Alexium International sees great potential with eco-friendly FR technology
Dirk Van Hyning, despite being just 42, describes himself as the senior member of Alexium’s South Carolina operations. Van Hyning, the company’s general manager of operations, spent 15 years with Milliken & Co.’s R&D operations prior to joining Alexium in May 2013. He said 2015 is driving top- and bottom-line growth for the company.
“If you look at where we started in 2014, with just eight or nine people, we came a long way,” Van Hyning said. “We launched the Nycolon (a durable topical treatment for nylon/cotton blends for military and workwear) and we doubled in size. We now have a suite of products; we have a greater understanding of auxiliary products and how they work with textiles. With pretty great speed, we made our way down the development cycle with a range of customers.”
As momentum carries into this year and beyond, Alexium will continue pushing the envelope on its chemistries. That will require an incremental scaling up of its current staff, which stood at 20 as the year began.
While the company’s growth is accelerating, it hasn’t reached the lofty employment goals that were projected by Alexium and the South Carolina Department of Commerce in 2010 when the company announced it would establish its facilities in Greenville County. A press release issued in May of that year said Alexium could create 200 jobs within five years.
Bob Brookins, head of research, development and training, said Alexium’s research zeroes in on and develops products to fill gaps in the marketplace. Brookins, who joined Alexium in late 2010, has a background in organic polymers. After receiving his Ph.D from the University of Florida, he conducted research for the U.S. Air Force related to the development of decontamination methods for chemical and biological threats. He says working with a startup company is always exciting.
“We’re technology driven and a lot of what we do is identify markets,” Brookins said. “Building that know-how has had to evolve. Now, we have the right team that understands the place of our technology from the molecular level and how to transition into production. We have a good team for identifying where there are gaps in the flame-retardant market and seeking where value-added products are needed. We are working on developing those products.”
Developing next-generation combat uniform could be ‘huge’ win
Alexium is now working with the U.S. Department of Defense through the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center to develop the next-generation FR Army Combat Uniform (FRACU). This program produces 4 million to 6 million yards of fabric annually and Alexium said this could mean revenue of $10 million to 16 million annually for the company. The full-length fabric Alexium produced was tested by three independent external labs and exceeded flame retardancy requirements in each case, the company said.
“We really have the attention of the military right now,” Van Hyning said. “With the size of this program, this could be a huge win for Alexium.”
This year, the company said it expects the FR program to move beyond just the U.S. Army. Alexium said it will be able to extend its FR products to meet FR uniform requirements of the other branches of the U.S. military to cover the Marines, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard as new FR programs are expanded by the Department of Defense to cover all military branches.
Other markets also have strong potential. Alexium has worked its way through the scale-up process with fabrics for the transportation, decorative fabrics, bedding and workwear markets. The company is working with several customers in the transportation upholstery market. Van Hyning said successful results have been achieved with several companies.
Looking ahead, Brookins said the company’s rapid growth will provide more resources for product development and will allow the company to eventually expand beyond textiles. That expansion will require additional staffing on the research side. At least two more people will be added this year, he said.
“We know where we want to be, based on the work we have done,” Brookins said. “We know what products we want to roll out. It’s just a matter of executing it.”