The trend towards lightweight products is a result of principle market drivers like cost-optimisation, functionality, and emissions reduction. The transportation sector (cars, trucks, trains, planes, buses, and boats) focusses on weight reduction given the desire for reduced fuel consumption, saving manufacturers money and energy. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions while increasing payloads also weighs heavily on this sector as companies are trying to reduce their carbon footprint.

Lightweighting is implemented by either replacing materials, components or packaging material with a lighter weight alternative or by cutting down the amount of material used. With lighter materials in weight and volume, transportation vehicles can create savings while conserving natural resources.

Voyaging Forward

We paved the way for lightweighting by supplying the first polyethylene terephthalate (PET) foam product, ArmaPET Struct, to the wind turbine industry in 2006, but we did not stop there. The lightweight truck market, for example, utilises ArmaPET sandwich composites for body structures such as side walls and flooring panels. Usually, these structures are made of heavier wood, polyurethane foams, and polypropylene honeycomb. Superior thermal insulation properties make our ArmaPET Eco product especially beneficial for food carriers and refrigerated trucks by providing lower energy operating costs and a reduced environmental impact.

Plus, ArmaPET Struct can replace hefty materials with a lighter alternative and provide high structural integrity, impact resistance, cost-efficiency, recyclability, and process ability. It is strong and durable, and so allows for direct application of fasteners and screws into the sandwich panels without adding extra wooden parts for reinforcement, another way weight reduction can improve the insulation performance. Additionally, with its continuous service temperature of +300°F (150°C), it can withstand higher temperatures and pressure during the production cycle.

Recyclability and Sustainability

With recyclability weighing more and more heavily on OEMs' and manufacturers' choices of core materials, we can help alleviate those concerns with ArmaPET. Since ArmaPET is made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled beverage bottles, it offers a more sustainable and recyclable solution that also helps reduce carbon dioxide production and keeps tonnes of plastic waste out of landfills.

Armacell PET Products

ArmaPET Eco, energy-efficient composite sandwich structures, optimise energy savings and reduce CO2 emissions. ArmaPET Eco offers a foam core that optimally combines structural performance, versatility, sustainability, and long-term insulating properties. The potential list of applications using ArmaPET Eco is practically endless from super-structures of refrigerated and recreational vehicles to food trolleys and many more.

ArmaPET Struct are structural foam boards used in wide range of composite sandwich applications ranging from rotor blades, train floors, building envelopes, truck bodies, boat hulls to specialty shapes like domes. 

ArmaPET Curve are thin flexible PET sheets designed to provide a highly sustainable and improved alternative to cross-linked polyethylene (XPE) and polypropylene (XPP) products in thermoforming applications. Among others, in the automotive industry PET Foil is used in door water shields and roof liners.

ArmaPET Shape are loose PET beads for the manufacturing of lightweight and strong foam cores on industrial scale, producible in nearly any shape. In the automotive industry our particle foams are designed for car body or chassis application.