A family business, founded by Edson P Foster Sr. in 1956, the Foster Needle has earned a global status in a dissimilar industry will be celebrating its golden anniversary this year.
This Lakeshore-area company manufactures highest quality needles about 200 million each year that are essential ingredient in the production process.
Needle punching is the method of interlocking fibers, creating an incredible variety of products.
Materials ranging from synthetic leather for athletic shoes to space shuttle tiles to blankets to automotive carpeting to wall coverings are manufactured worldwide on looms.
The needles they produce are far superior to other producers and China is their major market.
Company is the only American producer of felting needles for the non-woven and other textile industries and ships about 70 percent of its needles outside the US.
Foster Needle also seeks to design products that can enable looms to operate at a higher production speed.
An engineer, Edson P Foster Sr. created many barb and blade designs that became standard to the needle punch industry but never applied for patent, opting not to submit the detailed design diagrams to the US Patent Office fearing devious competitors might copy it.
It takes the competitors longer to copy from the actual Manitowoc-produced design.
Links with the loom machine manufacturers enables the company to know about 90 percentof the end-users it would like to supply.
Company will be participating in China's textile trade show in September 2006.
marketing@alchempro.com
