Insulation industry news from Global Insulation

Singapore: Luxembourg-based Armacell has opened its new Singapore Customer Experience Centre workshop and training facility. Armacell says that the centre will also stock its thermal, mechanical and acoustic foam insulation products.

President and CEO Patrick Mathieu said "Asia is a strong growth driver for Armacell and we have been investing intensively in the region. This investment is a testament to our confidence in new business opportunities and also highlights our core value proposition as a superior systems solutions provider.”

Singapore: Kingspan has officially opened an office in Singapore. Irish Deputy Prime Minster and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, Frances Fitzgerald, opened the site while leading a five-day trade and investment mission to Southeast Asia.

“Future growth will come from markets such as Asia, Latin America and maybe Africa at a later stage,” said Manuel Furer, Kingspan’s Regional Managing Director for Australasia and South East Asia.

Kingspan has listed its QuadCore insulation panels with the Singaporean authorities. The company also hopes to open an innovation centre in the region at some point.

Singapore: Insulation foams producer Armacell has been recognised for its pioneering initiative on environmental certification in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. The recognition came from UL Environment, which presented Armacell with an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) Certification during a workshop on Indoor Air Quality and Environmental Product Declarations.

Lisa Meier, UL Environment vice president and global general manager, acknowledged Armacell as the first company to receive EPDs from UL Environment in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region. Stephen Hodson, general manager of marketing APAC, said that, "The EPDs are highly important for providing product information to designers of green buildings in Asia."

Armacell's latest EPDs cover seven premium products that are sold across the Asia Pacific region. The initiative, said Armacell's technical manager for APAC Peter Cheng, makes Armacell the first insulation company to receive EPDs from UL Environment in APAC.

Demand for EPDs is growing in response to a change in green building guidelines and design practices. The US Green Building Council's LEED green building programme is now placing emphasis on life cycle assessment (LCA) based environmental reporting and transparency, rewarding points for the use of products with EPDs and LCAs as part of the Material and Resources (MR) Credits. Outside of the US, four of the top ten countries for LEED-certified buildings are in the APAC region: India, China, Korea and Taiwan.