Ace Laboratories' expansion gives it foothold in construction

RAVENNA, Ohio—Ace Laboratories is breaking into a new industry. To do this, the company has made a series of strategic moves, including lab expansions, efficiency accreditation and a new partnership in sustainability.

Ace Founder and CEO Erick Sharp said these moves all coincide as the Ravenna-based lab and testing company expands into construction materials testing. And it all started with the divestment of a lab in Uniontown, Ohio.

After Corrie MacColl Ltd., a subsidiary of Halcyon Agri Corp. Ltd., decided to divest the Momentum Technologies International lab in Uniontown, Sharp said, Ace—formerly Ace Products & Consulting L.L.C—decided to hire most of the team from that lab.

"We hired the people over immediately just because we knew they were trained and working in a lab, understood rubber with great work ethic and (had) great recommendations," Sharp told Rubber News.

Ace, which has seen 50 percent year-over-year growth, is constantly seeking ways to expand, Sharp said, "whether by adding organically or by mergers and acquisitions."

Hiring on this new team of experts was a perfect opportunity for the company.

And as Ace got the team on board, Sharp noticed their skillset and understanding in construction alongside the industry's growing demand.

"Combining that with the infrastructure bill coming out with big investments taking place in construction, we saw the demand, even more so, increasing," Sharp said.

"We started scouting out what it would take to do some of the most critical aspects of testing in the construction industry, specifically centered around roofing materials, building coatings and asphalt materials—both paving and roofing," he continued. "A lot of the asphalts are rubber modified anyway, so there's a lot of combination in the material technologies to what we were (already) doing."

With these findings, it made sense for Ace to expand into the construction sector, Sharp said.

"The biggest barrier to getting into a new market is the knowhow more so than assets.

"If it only came down to assets, then everybody would be jumping into new things all the time, especially the big companies with unlimited funds," he said. "But the knowhow is the key component, and we realized that we had a lot of knowhow here for a market that was growing, and so it made sense to invest in it and put in those capabilities."

So Ace got to work and set up the company's construction testing lab, expanding out about 5,000 square feet since the company began its break into this industry.

What the team needed next, Sharp said, was accreditation.

"We knew a big component of that would be the CRRC accreditation, which is the Cool Roof Rating Council," he said.

The Cool Roof Rating Council is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that monitors the radiative properties of roofing and exterior wall products.

"They're the ones basically monitoring energy efficiency through solar reflectance of roofing materials and wall coatings," Sharp said.

He said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, which promotes energy efficiency, used to monitor this sector, "but since Cool Roof Rating Council's come up with a good program, they've kind of just left that all to them to do the building side of it."

Ace got the necessary equipment in place, had CRRC come in to train the team, and it is now one of six companies in North America with an Accredited Independent Testing Laboratory (AITL) for the CRRC for roofing, and one of three for walls, giving them a leg up in the industry.

With Ace's new team and accreditation, the company was ready to enter the construction sector.

But Ace isn't planning to just enter this new and growing market. It wants to enhance it and make it more sustainable.

This is where the company's new partnership with Advanced Sustainable Polymers comes into play, Sharp said.

"We've always been involved in sustainable projects and sustainability across the board," he said of his company, adding, "… that's something that I have a lot of personal desire to see grow and strive."

ASP Founder and CEO Robert Meyer also was co-founder and former chairman and CEO of Halcyon. And since Ace hired a team from the "Halcyon conglomerate," Sharp said, the familiarity with the company leader helped along the introductions to begin their conversations.

During the week of DKT in Germany, Sharp and Meyer were able to sit down and reach a collaborative agreement "to develop and commercialize sustainable materials for use in elastomer and asphalt applications," according to a news release from Ace.

This new collaboration, Sharp told Rubber News, gives Ace the opportunity to create more technology and make its customers' products more functional when it comes to using circular materials.

Using sustainable materials like recycled polymers, bio-based polymers and other elastomeric materials manufactured in carbon neutral processes, Ace will utilize its laboratory to study and analyze sustainable materials in a range of polymer applications, as well as support ASP with the commercialization of these materials in asphalt and non-tire applications, according to the news release.

"A lot of this stuff with sustainable materials … is the fact (that) we've got some processes on being able to get it devulcanized or ground down and somewhat usable," Sharp said, "… but there's an intermediate step that's kind of needed to make the material more functionable and compatible with specific applications.

"That's where we're going to be putting a lot of our work and focus on, is how can we take these innovative feed streams that have been developed, but then enhance them even further to make them more compatible to be used at higher levels, bigger offsets, higher performance, in these end applications."

There are two major avenues for recycled polymers, he said, which include reintroduction into rubber applications or asphalt.

"We're a rubber lab, so we've got a lot of familiarity with (the rubber applications)," Sharp said. "Now we have the capabilities of analyzing, testing and mixing asphalt, too. So we've got both ends of this stream where we're able to evaluate into both of the biggest end market opportunities for sustainable products."

Sharp said Ace, ultimately, wants to grow "even beyond the recycled polymers" and is looking ahead at more bio-based and other recycled materials that may come from outside the polymer industry that can be used in polymer applications.

"The goals are ever evolving," he said of Ace's sustainability initiatives. "As I learn more about areas of sustainability, there seems to be more wish lists that come about."

Sharp said the entire process of expanding into the construction industry—an investment of "not quite $1 million, but close to $1 million"—has been months in the making, beginning with the first hires in December.

Throughout this process, the company has brought on eight people with the expansion, he said.

"We're definitely going to have more," he said, noting Ace is staffing heavy in anticipation of future growth.

"We never want to get caught out on our growth. We always want to be ahead of it."

Sharp noted the company is evaluating a couple potential M&A opportunities, as well as another market into which Ace plans to expand.

"We've got another target area that we're planning on blitzing on in 2023," he said. "We will hit that sector either by an acquisition or just by adding that capability here."

And Ace, which occupies 26,000 square feet of an approximately 220,000-sq.-ft. facility on 72 acres of land, has plenty of room for it.

Sharp could not disclose where exactly this expansion lies, but he did offer one hint: "It's still related to polymers."