by aleida, on December 15th, 2009
On the final day of Greenbuild Expo 2009, Kevin and I visited Richlite Company’s exhibitor booth where we met with Alexis Milbourn, the company’s Sales & Marketing Coordinator. Richlite, based in Tacoma, Washington, manufactures an impermeable paper-composite hard surfacing material for a variety of applications.
We have specified Richlite products before, but had never known much about the company itself. Through Alexis, we learned that it was founded in 1943. This was a complete shock – we had no idea it has been around more than half a century! The family owned business started off as a plywood company. It’s a little foggy as to when exactly they started to produce the paper-composite panels with which we are familiar today, but it is known that the idea for that product came from one of the family members. They started experimenting with resin-saturated paper that they would then press using the in-house machinery that they had at the time. The hard panels they created were marketed for industrial purposes at first.
Not long after, they entered the aerospace industry when they started selling these panels to Boeing. Boeing would take 3” thick panels, seam them together, and then form moldings for the noses of 747s, which they then used for testing purposes. If there was any doubt whatsoever as to the material’s solidity and durability, that completely dispelled it. (More current tests of one of their products – R50 – demonstrate that the panel can actually stop a bullet fired from a distance of 30’ – we saw the test result; it’s amazing.)
The 90s was a busy decade for Richlite. Architects became aware of the panels and, as Alexis explained, “ran with it.” That got Richlite into the countertop world, though soon enough the panels were being used for walls, floors, stairs, overhead applications, and many other purposes. All the panels boast excellent machinability. They are great for wide-format printing, screen printing, and routing. (We have used them for countertops and as in-store signage components.)
The company also introduced Skatelite, a 1/4” panel geared specifically toward the manufacturing of skate boarding ramps. The annual X Games ramps are made from this product. And for a little over a decade, Richlite has marketed a line of cutting boards under the name Epicurean.
Aside from their evident versatility, all the products carry a strong story of sustainability. As a whole, the company runs a tight operation. It has an efficient manufacturing process that, via proprietary technology, captures the volatile organic compounds that are burned during the thermo-setting process and reclaims them as a heat source to dry the resin-soaked paper that will later be pressed into panels. This operation allows the company to use 83% less energy than they would otherwise have to use. The entire collection is GREENGUARD Indoor Air Quality Certified®, which means it has proven to be a low-emitting material conducive to healthy indoor environments.
Most of the colors in the Richlite collection are manufactured using FSC certified paper. (As a point of clarification, Richlite Company does not manufacture nor dye this FSC certified paper, but rather purchases it from a company in Massachusetts.) The R50 panel, which does not use FSC certified paper, instead uses a paper product that contains 50% recycled corrugated cardboard content that is gathered locally and produced at a factory located less than 100 miles from the Richlite facility. The paper for another panel, the R100, is composed of 100% post-consumer recycled paper. This waste is also gathered locally and manufactured at a plant about 40 miles away from the Richlite facility.
Because of the phenolic resin used to soak the paper, the panels themselves cannot be recycled as paper. And while Richlite does not have its own take-back program, there is a company called Slate-ish that takes Richlite’s own panel trimmings and other scraps and manufactures them into small strips, squares, bars, and cubes that serve as alternatives to stone and ceramic tile products.
At Greenbuild 2009, Richlite was showcasing a cool new product named Cascade. The client can layer any combination of the available colors, create any desired pattern of any thickness, and Richlite will create the panels. The samples that we saw are really very cool and definitely worth checking out.
Thank you, Alexis, for guiding us through what was a very detailed look at the company!
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