Travel + Leisure: Your quick guide to travel in style and a slow living lifestyle.

Hey yah Guys and Gals and Gays! What’s up?! Sounds like everybody is doing well so hooray for that! Dear readers, I wanted to share with you guys my plant tour experience at URATEX. Few days ago, I was luckily invited as one of the bloggers who had a field trip at URATEX. Everything was remarkable and I was overwhelmed when I saw those huge foam stores at the plant.

Foam is part of our daily living. From washing our dishes to giving comfort, when we are about to sleep or having a sitting pretty on our bulky, soft, and comfortable sofas and couches. That bouncy mattress that I loved to jump in when I was still a kid was silently giving joy to an innocent kid. These are just some of the instances that we have encountered foam on our daily lives and how helpful it is to us.

bloggers
Thanks Ate Jen of http://joyfullifeofjen.blogspot.com/ for the photo.

Before going to the URATEX plant, I have no idea how the foam was made, its form, shape, the bouncy thing and a lot more. I am interested how it was made and as the tour started… Let’s discover how URATEX make foam.

Foam-making in the past may have been a tedious, manual labor-intensive job but the process was made even better, thanks to modern technology. By using state-of-the-art equipment, Multiflex RNC Philippines of the RGC Foam Group, makers of the popular Uratex foam, totally revolutionized foam-making not only in the Philippines but also in South East Asia.

Being one of the largest foam-makers in the region and with advanced foam manufacturing equipment, let us see how Uratex foam product is made:

The Research & Development laboratory – Just like cooking, a good foam starts with the perfect recipe, and in foam-making, the R&D facility of the RGC Foam Group, one of the country’s most advanced, is where it all starts. There, Uratex laboratory personnel develop formulations that result to certain types of foam and also conduct tests to ensure that the formulation will meet final product specifications that customers look for. Over the years, this department has developed thousands of formulations that benefited the Philippine industrial history, from the car development program of the 1970s to the footwear, garments and electronics boom in the 1980s and 1990s.

Foaming – Once the formulation is finalized, it is entered into the foaming machine’s computer system. There, up to 26 streams of different chemicals are doused using computer-controlled metering pumps for precision. The liquid will turn into cream within seconds and then into solid state within 1.5-2 minutes, and where the solid foam block may be cut between 1 to 60 meters in length. At the Muntinlupa plant, the foam is cut in 30-meter lengths. This high-tech machinery is complimented by a quality management system and ran by highly-trained personnel.

Thanks to John Remir of http://larawanatkape.wordpress.com/ for the photos.

Thanks to John Remir of http://larawanatkape.wordpress.com/ for the photo.

Curing area – The 30-meter long blocks are then picked up by an overhead crane and transferred to the curing area. Foam is produced via an exothermic reaction where the center may reach up to 145-165 degrees Celsius within 20-30 minutes. It will not start to cool for another 3-4 hours but will reach room temperature within 24 hours and is “cured”.

Foam block warehouse – This is the storage area for the foam blocks. From there, the plant’s production department will request for a specific type of block with different sizes as per orders coming from customers. These blocks are then moved to the production area where they will be cut according to the desired sizes.

Thanks to John Remir of http://larawanatkape.wordpress.com/ for some of the photo.

Production area – It is from this area where the Uratex products that we all see come from. The foam blocks are cut into the requested size and then “contoured” based on the type of product to be produced, whether a pillow, a mattress, or even a car seat foam. Once cut and contoured, the product goes straight to packaging under strict quality control standards, ready for delivery to the customer.

Carpet for Cars
Thanks to Mac of http://atibapangpangyayari.blogspot.com/ for the photo.

The RGC Group of Companies revolutionized foam making back in 1987 when they set up the first continuous foaming machine in the country called the “Vertifoam” process. This involves computerized metering of materials to form perfectly-shaped foam with lesser scrap that benefited both the market and the environment because of less wastage.

In 2001, the group further blazed the trail in foam-making when it installed new foaming equipment called “Hennecke.” Tagged as the “Mercedes Benz” of the foam-making industry, this German-manufactured equipment is regarded as the best in the world. On December 2009, the RGC Group invested on another Hennecke machine with the latest technological improvements to serve as back-up to the year 2001 version.

And before I ended my post, please see our billboard for Uratex. Ha-ha. I’m just kidding, we just having fun during the tour and we posed like we were having a pillow fight. In addition, I love their pillow; soft and comfy.