Rigifoam group buys National Urethane Industries
RIGIFOAM has purchased National Urethane Industries, including all its plant, lab and intellectual property, in the process creating one of the top polyurethane solutions supply operations in Africa.
The transaction was completed recently, for an undisclosed sum.
Like Rigifoam, National Urethane Industries (NUI) is a Johannesburg-based polyurethane systems house with a national footprint plus exports but with different specialties. Using PU feedstock, NUI is an already well established manufacturer of ‘CASE’ products (coatings, adhesives, sealants and elastomers) for a wide range of applications. It uses the same source PU polymers as Rigifoam but is focused on different market sectors. Based up till now in Isando, NUI is an ISO 9001:2015-certified business that has been in operation since 1982 and has most recently been run by Donovan Slade.
Established as recently as 2000, Rigifoam is South Africa’s leading supplier of rigid PU and polyisocyanurate foam products from 32-80kg/m³ which are used chiefly in insulation applications in the residential, construction and industrial sectors. Rigifoam was established by Duncan Goldsmith and Michael Yacoby, who remain at the helm of the now expanded group
So far only NUI’s admin team have moved over to the Rigifoam premises in Apex Industrial, Benoni, with the NUI production facilities and lab due to shift in due course. Gaining access to the NUI intellectual property was one of the main attractions for the Rigifoam purchase.
NUI will continue to operate as an entity under the Rigifoam group umbrella. Rigifoam also operates the Resichem and Lambdaboard business divisions, which supply different PU product solutions.
Rigifoam and NUI were most recently in contact in 2019 when, between them, they purchased the plant and expertise of Kasodur, a Cape TPU and PU castings business which was exiting the market. Rigifoam bought the castings operation and set up what has since fallen under Rigifoam Cape while NUI bought the TPU (thermoplastic polyurethane) business. Rigifoam has since departed from the castings area as that would have meant it would be competing with its NUI customers.
