Blickle is committed to polyurethane

Using polyurethane treads for wheels and castors is an increasingly popular choice. These polymer elastomers have a wide range of advantages. They are good at preserving floors, quiet and oil resistant. Blickle has decades of experience in the development and manufacture of wheels with a cast polyurethane tread. The company provides numerous different versions which have established themselves in many sectors and applications. In order to meet the increasing demand for the elastomer, Blickle will expand its production capacities and operate one of the world’s largest polyurethane wheel production facilities.

Besthane® is the premium polyurethane in Blickle’s range and is a hard polyurethane-elastomer. The 92° Shore A tread has a low level of starting and rolling resistance and is also hydrolysis resistant. Wheels with a Besthane® tread are highly resistant to heat build-up under dynamic load and are therefore particularly suitable for higher speeds. The 92° Shore A Extrathane® was the first polyurethane in Blickle’s product range and is now the company’s standard polyurethane. It is particularly resistant to cuts and tear propagation. Besthane® and Softhane® treads followed a little while later. The latter is a soft polymer elastomer which provides a particularly high level of vibration absorption and floor surface preservation. Blickle then launched Besthane® Soft, the soft and hydrolysis resistant alternative to Besthane®. Wheels with this tread provide good traction and low-noise operation. They are also highly resistant to heat build-up under dynamic load. This makes them well suited for high speed applications, like Blickle’s electric drive systems. Find out more in our brochure!

In addition to polyurethane wheels with treads developed in house by Blickle, the company also manufactures wheels with a Vulkollan® tread in response to increased market demand. This tread is the perfect complement for the rest of Blickle's product range. These 92° Shore A wheels provide high dynamic load capacity and good traction for drive applications. Due to their excellent mechanical properties, these wheels are primarily used as drive wheels in conveyor systems.

Blickle believes that the demand for polyurethane wheels will continue to increase. The varied product range includes:

• Levelling castors
• Press-on bands
• Compact castors
• Heavy duty and drive wheels
• Swivel castors and fixed castors
• Guide rollers
• Stacker wheels
• Pallet truck rollers
• Spring-loaded castors

Special polyurethanes for high dynamic and mechanical loads as well as antistatic and optimised rolling resistance versions round out the product range. Customised products with demanding load capacity requirements are playing an increasingly important role in the company’s business. David Blickle, a member of the executive team, describes the company’s vision as follows: “We don’t just provide standard wheels and castors; we’re more of a specialist in customised solutions. Despite our wide range of 30,000 standard products, we get a huge number of requests for customised products from our customers every day. We love working in close partnership with them to make these products a reality.” Tailored solutions are Blickle’s speciality. “Custom-made solutions are our strength. The extensive expertise of our engineers allows us to develop and optimise polyurethane products for specific applications. Our teams of experienced designers, chemists and test engineers know exactly how to create perfect products to meet customer requirements. We can make changes to the characteristics of our products by adjusting process parameters or formulas. This allows us to create the ideal tread for every application,” explains David Blickle.
To our special solutions

Blickle requires a large amount of manufacturing capacity due to its comprehensive range of products and the increasing number of customised solutions. Blickle is taking proactive steps to prevent production bottlenecks: “We have to use cutting edge manufacturing technology and increase our capacities so that we can remain flexible in response to customer requests and provide high quality products with short delivery times,” says David Blickle, before putting his cards on the table: Blickle is planning to build a new polyurethane manufacturing facility to provide additional opportunities going forward. The groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility is currently scheduled for early 2020. This expansion will give Blickle one of the largest polyurethane wheel manufacturing facilities in the world, while also allowing the company to optimise its value and logistics streams.