(Editor’s note: This is the 36th installment in a monthly series highlighting some of the region’s unsung manufacturers that make products essential to the economy and, in many cases, our way of life. See previous installments here.)
In more ways than one, Cranston-based Mearthane Products Corp. has proved to be the ultimate spinoff company over the last 60 years.
The company was created in 1965 to manufacture polyurethane products and has long outlived its parent, a Massachusetts shoe company named Mears.
Now a large portion of Mearthane’s business is producing industrial rollers and wheels that take advantage of polyurethane’s properties to offer a sweet spot between durability, grip and smoothness.
And those components can be found in everything from ATM machines – Mearthane wheels spit out the cash – and warehouse conveyor belts to factory robotics and inline skates.
“We’ve made almost every wheel you can imagine,” said Alejandro Martinez, Mearthane’s marketing director.
Indeed, the company churns out more than 500,000 skating wheels annually from its headquarters, a 35,000-square-foot factory in an industrial complex in western Cranston – making it one of the leading manufacturers of inline wheels in the country. Another 500,000 polyurethane components are produced in Cranston for other industries, too.
Mearthane got its start after the Massachusetts shoemaker started experimenting with polyurethane to produce footwear in the 1960s.
The polymer, which can behave like either rubber or plastic, had been developed by the Germans during World War II to replace rubber, which was in short supply. By the 1950s, the material made its way to the United States, where manufacturers began experimenting with how it could be used, Martinez says.
The shoemaker realized the potential for uses well beyond shoes and split off Mearthane, which first set up shop in North Providence 60 years ago, then moved to its Cranston location in the 1970s.
In the early days, Mearthane was producing polyurethane for shoe soles, but as footwear manufacturers either moved overseas or faded from existence, Mearthane looked for other uses for its polymers.
And the company stumbled on a big one in the 1970s.
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RIDING HIGH: Mearthane Products Corp. in Cranston produces precision polyurethane products, including about 500,000 inline skate wheels annually, according to Alejandro Martinez, the company’s marketing director.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
That’s when, Martinez says, employees at Mearthane noticed that the office’s 3M paper copier wasn’t working properly. They found that the small rubber rollers inside the machine had worn out and were unable to advance the copy paper.
The workers had an idea: Let’s coat the roller with urethane.
Problem solved. The machine worked smoothly, and the modified part didn’t escape the notice of the 3M maintenance crew when it showed up to service the copier. Usually, they had to replace the rubber rollers on the copiers frequently, but the urethane-covered ones looked brand-new.
“A few weeks later, there was a team of executives from 3M in the building talking about how we might be able to help them develop a polyurethane component for a paper-moving machine,” Martinez said.
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A DEFT TOUCH: Mearthane Products Corp. employee Ana Parra uses a brush to apply adhesive to a sub-component of a Mearthane roller.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
That led to a big pivot for Mearthane toward what Martinez calls “media handling” – transporting paper through a machine, whether it’s a high-speed newspaper printer or the mechanisms that ATMs use to move dollar bills. Each of these processes involves tiny polymer rollers and wheels that Mearthane creates.
Over time, the company turned its attention to much larger and faster wheels, too.
By 1975, Mearthane invented the precision-bearing skateboard wheel that was made with polyurethane, which is more durable than the clay that had been used for skateboard wheels.
Now Mearthane’s wheels are more commonly seen in inline skates. The company’s Black Magic wheels are its top product line, and its wheels are seen in skates sold by popular inline skating brands such as Rollerblade, Martinez says.
While inline speed skating is not an Olympic sport, athletes competing in speed skating on ice during the winter Olympics often roller skate in the offseason. Many of these athletes use Mearthane’s wheels.
“In inline skating, the most important part of the athlete’s kit is the wheels, and so they’re willing to invest in good products,” Martinez said.
The speed-skating wheels have a dual layer: a bouncy core that is then covered with hardened polyurethane.
The bounciness of the inner layer is meant to offer speed skaters more rebound, which helps them gain more speed coming out of turns.
At the Cranston factory, the polymer is made in large tube shapes that are sliced into rings and placed around a rigid wheel hub.
The hub and core are placed into a mold and another layer of liquid polyurethane is poured in. After the mold is spun and the polyurethane has hardened, it’s taken out of the mold and employees grind off excess materials.
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HUB OF ACTIVITY: Pedro Martinez, machine operator at Mearthane Products Corp., loads one of the wheel-molding machines at the Cranston factory.
PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO[/caption]
Many of the other components produced by Mearthane are custom-designed and formulated for customers, and the uses are nearly endless.
Products range from rollers used in the process of creating corrugated cardboard for shipping boxes to minuscule and precise rollers that allow for the fabrication of delicate semiconductor wafers.
“We make things that go in the things that make the world go around,” Martinez said.
The products go beyond wheels. One popular Mearthane component is the “vertebrae bend restrictor,” which looks like vertebrae made of polyurethane and inserted into things such as undersea cables to prevent kinking and to reduce stresses while being extremely durable and flexible.
Military contractors are significant customers, too.
Mearthane has a custom polyurethane formula specific for use on nuclear submarines, where components must be durable in harsh conditions for long periods of time because machinery can only be serviced in the dry dock.
“It’s as complicated as it sounds, if not more so,” Martinez said. “So these materials are really good at surviving those marine environments.”
Right now, Mearthane employs about 66 people in Cranston, but the company has expanded far beyond Rhode Island.
Mearthane has acquired eight companies since 2017. The company operates six factories spanning about 170,000 square feet in six different states, including Virginia and Texas. Each of these facilities uses similar technologies and processes, but they serve slightly different markets.
As a result of this expansion, the number of employees skyrocketed from a few dozen to at least 200. And the company’s revenue has grown six times, although Martinez declined to give specific revenue figures.
The acquisitions came after Mearthane switched hands from its founder to a group of buyers, including Peter Kaczmarek, who now serves as the company’s CEO and president.
Kaczmarek joined the company after leading a string of international businesses while he lived in Rhode Island. And he says he was excited about the opportunity to help a smaller manufacturing company grow.
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HOME BASE: Mearthane Products Corp. has been headquartered in Cranston since the 1970s but has expanded beyond Rhode Island in recent years. The company has acquired eight U.S. companies since 2017.
PBN PHOTO/WILLIAM HAMILTON[/caption]
Kaczmarek worked on several business acquisitions and noticed there were manufacturers similar to Mearthane across the country but they stayed small because they didn’t have the resources to grow.
So, he began acquiring companies in the polyurethane industry where the owner was getting ready to retire and didn’t have a succession plan.
Mearthane is still looking for similar situations.
“We’re one of the larger and more capable firms out there, so it’s exciting to sort of be part of that,” Kaczmarek said. “There are still opportunities for more growth.”
