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The eBearing News
September 14, 2004
Freudenberg-NOK Abandons
Plastics for Seals
copyright © 2004 eBearing Inc.
Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Products (USA, a subsidiary of Freudenberg-NOK, Germany, itself a 1989 joint venture
of Germany's Freudenberg and Japan's NOK) is abandoning the thermoset plastic gasket business as
non-core, to focus on seals.
The thermoset plastic gasket business was difficult for Freudenberg-NOK. While it offered sales and marketing
synergies with the seal business, it also put the company into direct competition with supplier customers.
Sealing Products' thermoset gaskets are manufactured from a proprietary polymer.
Its only thermoset customer is DaimlerChrysler for Chrysler Corp. automotive engine cam cover gaskets.
Sealing Products won other supply contracts for thermoset gaskets, but has since backed out of them.
The DaimlerChrysler supply contract runs 2-4 more years, which Sealing Products said it will honor.
In the end the potential for lost sales opportunities in the seal business outweighed any possible
gains in thermoset gaskets. Thermoset gaskets are a $10 million segment for Sealing Products, while
seal sales to automakers in North America alone hit $720 million in 2003. By 2008, Sealing Products
expects seal sales in North America to reach $1.25 billion.
Richard Allen, Freudenberg-NOK Manufactured Products CEO, said, "Our focus on sales has led us to become a
single-source capable supplier. We can supply every single seal, be it for an engine, a transmission,
an axle, or whatever."
Freudenberg-NOK has international sales of approximately $7.5 billion, and produces more than
10 billion components per year across 57 operations worldwide. U.S. businesses include Sealing Systems,
Simrit, TransTec, Flexitech, Corteco, Vibracoustic, and Dichtomatik.
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- by Bruce A. Carr
from individual research,
tips and commercial sources.
Copyrighted material; unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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Entire contents Copyright © 1999-2010, eBearing Inc. All rights reserved.
eBearing.com and "... for everything that moves" are registered trademarks of eBearing Inc.
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