Roland Kramer

3 – 5 DECEMBER 2024

MESSE STUTTGART (HALL 1), GERMANY

MESSE STUTTGART (HALL 1), GERMANY

3 – 5 DECEMBER 2024

EXHIBITOR INTERVIEW

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Roland Kramer

Director Group R&D & Innovation Excellence, Neveon Holding GmbH

 

What will you be exhibiting at the show, and are you bringing anything new to the market?

We are going to present our flexible and composite polyurethane foams, as well as products manufactured using them. Through the production of 300 different grades of standard and speciality foams, and their conversion into innovative, semi-finished and finished products, Neveon offers customised solutions for comfort, transportation, and applications. These include comfy mattresses, cosy sofas, a vast range of automotive parts, ultra-light aircraft seats, energy-saving insulation materials, protective packaging solutions, sports equipment, shoe inserts, and more. 

A highlight for this year’s Foam Expo will be the latest addition to our foam portfolio, a flame-retardant polyurethane graphite foam for improved seating comfort in aircraft and trains. Our polyurethane graphite moulded foam is free from melamine and halogen and meets the strict requirements of the EN 45545-2, HL3 railway norm and the FAR 25.853a aviation standard. It, therefore, offers safety for installation on board aircraft and trains. Moreover, as our graphite foam eliminates the need for additional fire blockers, it is cost-effective, extremely lightweight, and consequently has an improved environmental footprint. Also, our flame-retardant Endura graphite slab-stock foam is melamine and halogen-free and possesses excellent wet compression set and air permeability. 

 

Will you have any demonstrations, competitions, or attractions at your stand?

With the debut of our melamine-free and halogen-free, flame-retardant polyurethane graphite foam, we will be spotlighting both fire retardant moulded and our Endura slab-stock foam solutions.

 

Why is this event important to your business?

Foam Expo is the largest trade fair for technical foam, and we save the date as soon as it gets released. The show provides the perfect opportunity for teamwork along the entire supply chain. This year we are again looking forward to exchanging ideas with numerous existing customers and partners and meeting new, interested parties.

 

Will you have any demonstrations, competitions, or attractions at your stand?

There are two highlights I wish to mention. Firstly, our new moulded foam production plant in Valašské Meziříčí in the eastern Czech Republic. The site has an area of 52,000 m2 of which 18,700 m2 consist of production facilities containing state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment. This new moulded foam production location benefits our mobility business unit and rounds off our portfolio in the areas of acoustics and seating solutions. It, therefore, represents an important milestone for the company.

Secondly, our mattress take-back pilot project in Berlin. We cooperate with BASF on the further development of mattress recycling. One step towards a closed cycle, which already commences with the ecological product design, involves the collection and return of old mattresses. Therefore, to simplify this procedure, in mid-February 2022, we launched the pilot REMATTRESS take-back project in Berlin. On the online reservation platform, Berlin residents can book the collection of their old mattresses. Following the arrangement of an appointment, the mattresses are picked up, then dismantled professionally and made available for reprocessing. REMATTRESS thus makes an important contribution to the circular economy, as recycled materials can be used to manufacture new foam products.

 

What sustainable measures are you taking? Any targets you’re proud of hitting?

We take our ecological and social responsibilities very seriously. Accordingly, sustainable product design, circular economy, emission reductions and a healthy corporate culture represent applied company principles. We have established internal structures and developed our Impact Strategy based on the Greiner AG Blue Plan and the ESG criteria. Our motto is 'Foam in Service for Impact' and divided it into three interconnected elements 'OUR PLANET, OUR PEOPLE, OUR RESPONSIBILITY'. For each of these, we have defined a vision for success and determined measurable goals, thus ensuring as far as possible a concrete and effective contribution to a more solidary and better global community.

We have made progress in measuring and analysing the environmental footprint of our raw material use and production processes. This new, science-based approach is key to identifying the areas that offer the greatest possible leverage for environmental footprint reduction. A clear area of focus is the recycling of polyurethane foams and the possibility this offers to minimise the environmental footprint of our products. We have begun a collaboration with BASF, which is aimed at facilitating PU foam collection, high-quality recycling, and reuse. This is a challenge that will require several years to reach a large scale. Nevertheless, we already foresee this teamwork between BASF as a raw materials supplier, Neveon as a foam producer and our customers, enabling us to accelerate essential material and business development.

 

What fascinates you about your role?

At Neveon, we work with foams from the reaction process to the final manufacturing of components such as automotive acoustic absorbers. As we generate digital transparency throughout our production chain, we also discover numerous opportunities for improvements to our materials and the reduction of their environmental footprint. This is something I, as the Group Director of R&D & Innovation Excellence, find particularly exciting.

 

Tell us your funniest foam joke/ one-liner!

Always avoid a situation in which the final business case of a product must be multiplied by the density of the foam.

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