Auto industry recognizes Ontario company for sustainable product
New fabric is made from beans and water bottles
A 150-year old manufacturer in Cambridge, Ontario, is launching a new, synthetic fabric that has won an international award for sustainability and is poised to transform a major segment of the auto parts sector.
"We're re-inventing ourselves," says Patrick Diebel, Canadian General-Tower's (CGT) vice-president of advanced technology. Diebel oversaw a team of CGT engineers and chemists who developed the new bio-based process, called Vehreo.
Printing a CGT swimming pool liner
CGT started in the early 1860s, making rubber coverings for wagon wheels. By the beginning of the 20th century, the company had shifted to coated fabrics, including raincoats and shower curtains. Today, it is the world's largest manufacturer of swimming pool liners.
CGT has been supplying the auto industry with coated fabrics for more than 80 years. Eighty-five per cent of all cars and light trucks built in North America have CGT fabrics in their seats, seat backs, head and arm rests, along with instrument and door panels. Its synthetic leather for high-end cars is known for its quality and durability. "Most consumers can't tell the difference between our product and leather," says Diebel. "Our seats are just as comfortable."
But the green revolution and possible dwindling oil supplies are leading the company to revolutionize manufacturing methods for this line of synthetics. From a petroleum-based process, CGT has moved to a bio-based method, using a combination of soy and other beans along with recycled water bottles, to make Vehreo.
It took three years of research and trials to perfect the Vehreo process, an innovation spurred by a $750,000 matching research grant from the province's BioAuto Council. "It's an excellent program," Diebel says, "aimed at quick commercialization."
But developing and fine-tuning Vehreo was only the beginning. The next step was the arduous process of meeting the auto companies' rigorous purchase-qualifying standards. Toyota recently gave the product an okay, and Diebel is optimistic that Ford and Hyundai will soon follow suit. Says Diebel: "If this takes off, we could be diverting 6.5 million recycled water bottles annually."
Last November, CGT won the European-based Network of Automotive Excellence innovation award for its Vehreo breakthrough. The award recognized Vehreo's sustainability, based on bio-derived and recycled raw materials. "We were honoured to be among the first non-Europeans to receive this award," says Diebel of the presentation at a major German automobile show that emphasizes technological breakthroughs.
A month earlier, Diebel and a CGT team attended another German trade show in Wolfsburg, home to Volkswagen's global headquarters. They walked away from that event with $32.5 million in new orders to provide CGT's traditional synthetic leather for VW plants in Mexico, Tennessee and China. (Diebel spends most of his time in China these days as head of CGT's China operations, planning to capitalize on that country's exploding automobile market.)
Diebel attributes CGT's Wolfsburg conference success to Ontario officials and, especially, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Sandra Pupatello. "She was an amazing ambassador for Ontario and Canada," says Diebel. "She made the performance of other countries pale in comparison."
He adds: "Her keynote dinner speech was an education in why one should invest in Ontario. Then, she was able to corral a number of key auto officials for a breakfast meeting that allowed us to connect with senior officials from several major auto manufacturers. We couldn't have done it without her and the ministry people."
Diebel expects those introductions to help the company return to $300 million in annual revenues by 2013, a level reached before the recession devastated the North American auto industry. "But as a result of changes we had to make, we're now more profitable than before," he adds.
CGT now has some 500 employees, almost all of them at its Cambridge plant and head office, some 80 kilometres west of Toronto. They have sales forces in Mexico City and Detroit.
Meanwhile, a mine in Chile uses three million square metres of CGT's chemical-resistant polyvinyl chloride liner to prevent lithium from seeping back into the earth as it (and potassium) is extracted from the evaporating brine. And then there's China, where CGT will soon own its second manufacturing operation for its traditional synthetic leather. If that market continues its phenomenal growth and more automakers sign on to its Vehreo products, the prospects for growth seem unlimited.
