CEDEPA: a testbed for rigid panel innovation

CEDEPA, based in Navarre, Spain is a joint development company for rigid polyurethane panels operated by Dow Chemical and Italian machinery maker Saip. Simon Robinson visited the site

Navarra, situated nearly three hours by train from Barcelona and an hour from Zaragoza, may seem like a strange place to locate a demonstration plant to show companies how to make insulated panels but it fits with the local government’s aims to invest in innovation said Javier Carnicer, technical service and development director, EMEA, Dow Chemical, a co-director of CEDEPA.

CEDEPA is the acronym of centro de desarrollo del panel en continuo, or continuous panel development centre. It is a joint venture between Dow Chemical and Saip.

Carnicer said the firms looked at a number of possibilities before deciding on Tudela: “Italy was a possibility because Saip is Italian, Dow was neutral but the decision was influenced by the good and long lasting relationship with the local government of Navarra.

The government of Navarra is strongly in favour of renewable energy and is a net contributor to the Spanish energy grid. The region is well advanced in its commitment with innovation and also has higher GDP than the average in the EU, he said.

Carnicer said: “Navarra produces more renewable energy than it consumes”. One of the visible signs of the region’s commitment to renewable energy is the number of wind turbines which are a common site on hill tops in Navarra.

Carnicer said: “Industry’s contribution to GDP in the region is above the average in Spain and the EU. It is in line with the most advanced regions in the EU. Building the site here fitted well with the region’s political aims. CEDEPA was conceived as an international centre so the location was less important and neither Dow nor Saip had a location here.

CEDEPA co-director, Walter Pozzi of Saip, added that the location is neutral for visiting companies. He added that companies from China, Russia, Europe, Africa and Latin America have all been to the site since it opened.

Tudela is close to a Dow facility for material supplies and it is easy to reach. A Dow polyurethanes systems site is in Ribaforada. The logistics are very good from Madrid, from Barcelona it’s very fast and simple to get here, Pozzi said.

He added the decision to build CEDEPA was not taken quickly. Dow and Saip discussed the best way to encourage innovation several times and agreed that something was missing. Both firms felt that there were no examples of one equipment supplier and one material supplier jointly coming to the market with a solution or a proposal.

“We chose Navarra because there is also a good network of local universities in Zaragoza, Pamplona and of course in Barcelona or Madrid,” Pozzi added.

However, once the decision to invest had been taken, the local authority moved quickly. The speed at which the project was authorised and built by the Local Enterprise Company (LEC) “is a very good example of cooperation between public and private companies,” Pozzi said. He continued: “When we decided to make the investment it was in the middle of the financial crisis. CEPEDA is an expensive tool but it is really accelerating innovation,” said Pozzi.

For the local government, the driver was to help position the region as a technology centre. “CEDEPA is not a company where we are going to employ hundreds of people. The number of jobs is limited, the real driver was in the research and innovation,” Carnicer said.

“CEDEPA is about innovation in machinery and innovation in chemicals. The real innovation is in the product,” said Pozzi.

“In the end we decided to form a company run 50-50,” Pozzi. “CEDEPA,” he added, “is about innovation and minimising risk for our customers.

“We believe that Saip alone or Dow alone could not provide the solution.

“The facility is particularly helpful to customers from emerging markets, where polyurethane education is less well developed than it is in other areas,” Pozzi added.

One of the key advantages of the CEDEPA site, both Pozzi and Carnicer agreed, is that it enables people to see common problems which occur in rigid foam panel manufacture and understand how they can be rectified without a call to either the machinery supplier or material supplier.

“Without CEDEPA, a new customer would have to buy the chemicals and then buy the machinery, prepare everything and start by themselves,” said Pozzi.

“With CEDEPA this risk is almost zero. Customers come here, they visit the line and all the steps are shown,” he added.

Carnicer said: “We can run prototypes for customers to enable people to pre-market.”

He continued: “On top of the innovation toolbox, we talk about risk mitigation. Panels can get certified before the line is installed for example. It’s about mitigating risk.”

So has Saip sold lines on the basis? “Absolutely we have,” said Pozzi.

Pozzi said: “It’s a different approach to the market…To prove the value we add to the proposal.”

Typically, Pozzi said, training is based on chemical theory and mechanical theory then some basic information about the product. After that clients are shown how to run the line and eventually run the line by themselves and with particular focus on troubleshooting.

CEDEPA has been able to benefit more established customers, and also the partners in different ways.

“For well-established companies it is more useful for innovation,” said Carnicer. “It is useful for testing new product ideas without interrupting production,” he added.

“As materials manufacturers we can trial formulations on production-sized equipment, which can be difficult to do at customers’ sites, where most of our efforts naturally going to problem solving,” Carnicer said.

“Additionally, it gives us the opportunity to try systems with processing parameters which are quite different to those found in commercial use. You can try out of the box ideas,” he continued.

Carnicer said “One example of this is in the development of Dow’s new halogen free PIR technology for continuous rigid-faced (RF) double belt lamination (DBL) production. This allows PIR panels to be produced with the highest fire rating possible for organic insulation BS1D0,” Some of the work was done at CEPEDA, Carnicer said.

“If you have to rely on much smaller scale labs or customer trials you cannot work on more innovative solutions. You are limited,” Carnicer said.

Pozzi added: “Saip has developed new software, which has increased the efficiency of the heating system that has allowed us to reduce the cost of running the line by 10% and this can be implemented this on standard lines,” he added.

“We know this because we checked the energy bill,” said Pozzi.

CEDEPA is here to run projects for the partners, jointly or for the individual owners, or third parties, and to run product development for the partners, said Pozzi. It is open to third party activities. It is a privately-owned centre which can run fully confidential trials for third parties, Pozzi and Carnicer said.

CEDEPA timeline

CEDEPA opened to the public in March 2011, a few months after Saip and Dow Chemical went to the local government and proposed building a demonstration centre.

Construction started in September 2010 with a ground breaking in August 2010, and the facility is built out of insulated metal panels.

Construction was paid for by local government-enterprise company and the site is leased from the LEC by CEDEPA. Dow and Saip invested around euro4.5m between them on equipment - not on the building.

About the site

CEDEPA is housed in a building which is 150m x 35m. The Saip-built production line is designed to allow flexible manufacturing across a wide range of activities.

The Line’s total length is 130 m. The conveyor is 18m long, shorter than the average of newly installed lines (25 to 30m) used in the industry, said Carnicer, but it has comparative technical features to existing lines. Other sections of the line are longer to provide more flexibility to try new production processes.

The line can operate at 20mt/min maximum speed and handle panels with a completed thickness of between five and 220mm. The line features interchangeable cassettes to enable different wall profiles to be produced, it has zonal heating which can warm panels to 75°C; corona treatment and a range of other processes to assimilate a wide range of products and methods. It can run panels with a wide combination of facings and fillings. Saip made all of the equipment from the decoilers to the packing unit.

The line is controlled through a central control station which allows the process to be monitored and enables feedback for troubleshooting the process. This is used widely in the training courses operated at the facility. Additionally, data from the control station can be remotely accessed and video feeds viewed via the internet. This allows technicians working remotely to view the process in real time.

Away from the line itself, there are tank stores. There also a small testing laboratory to show clients the minimum levels of testing that they are likely to need to be able to verify the product they make meets the specifications they claim. Test facilities include the tensile strength of the foam and the lambda value.

CEDEPA structure

CEPEDA is organised with a board of two directors, Carnicer of Dow and Pozzi of Saip and a management team that ranks the priorities of the organisation and day-to-day operations. There are four members, two from Saip and, two from Dow. CEDEPA employs four people which is all that is needed to operate the facility and run the line.