Kent Elastomer Products focusing on 'raising the bar' for latex

KENT, Ohio—With three facilities across the state of Ohio, Kent Elastomer Products has spent more than 60 years carving out a niche for itself in the latex production space. Now the only manufacturer of latex dip tubing in the U.S., company President John Danes believes that distinction comes with great responsibility for the 160-employee firm.

KEP runs 38 latex dip machines for 24 hours a day on weekdays at its Kent headquarters, according Danes. About 75 percent of that product goes into the medical industries, with other end markets including sporting goods and general industry.

Danes, who took over for longtime company leader Bob Oborn in November 2023, has been with KEP in some form since 1987.

"My second year (as president) has been excellent," Danes said. "It's everything I thought it would be, I guess.

"It's been an excellent, awesome experience. When I started here in 1987, I never aspired to be the president of Kent Elastomer. That wasn't my goal by any means. I came in as general labor, just like the president before me did, and Kent Latex and Kent Elastomer grew me."

After working his way up through the manufacturing floor and into the company's top position, he said he wants to afford the company's current manufacturing work force the same opportunities.

"Whether you've been here 40 years, 50 years or 50 minutes, if you decided to pick Kent Elastomer, I want you to retire here," Danes said. "I want you to have the opportunities that I had. If you're willing to work for it and do those things, I want to make sure that we put ourselves in a position to give you the opportunity to grow with the company."

Under the guidance of both Oborn and Danes, the firm has seen its fair share of reinvention in hopes of raising the bar across the board. Danes said that perhaps KEP's greatest mission has been its pursuit of lean manufacturing.

In an effort to control rising costs, Kent Elastomer Products has taken to the philosophy of "lean manufacturing," Danes said. Since 2006, the company has worked to solve inefficiencies throughout its production process through several unique avenues. Danes said that the top-down efficiency analysis is no small factor in KEP's continued success, even in a post-latex allergy world.

"Lean (manufacturing) has done a lot for us," Danes said. "Our goal is always to try to continuously improve, raise the bar. It's one of our core values. Obviously, when material goes up, labor goes up, everything's going up (so) we have to raise some prices. But we do it very minimally compared to what we would've done, had we not been on our lean journey for the last 19 years."

As focused as KEP has become in finding efficiencies in its manufacturing system, Danes said that the company has no plans to automate its latex tubing system. Still, finding labor for the company's latex tubing division is one of the final vestiges left over from the coronavirus pandemic, he said.

"We all know that labor's still an issue around the world, especially in the U.S.," Danes said. "Finding quality people to work some of our general labor and next level up positions still remains tough. Even today, it still remains tough, but it's not near as hard as it was just after COVID."

Speaking on the lingering problems from COVID, Danes believes that KEP has recovered well.

"I think everything's almost returned to normal," he said. "People have right-sized their inventory, so the orders that we're seeing now is what they really want. They're not ordering out of fear, or concern that they're not going to get it, us included.

"But the prices on everything have gone up, so that's an issue. It costs more to ship stuff, it costs more for latex, it costs more to maintain personnel, it costs more to buy equipment."

KEP's mission, then, is to keep prices down for its customers as much as it can, Danes said. Still, the company has one more expense: sustainability. But the company believes that the reporting costs that come with green energy practices are well worth it.

The firm prides itself on sustainability throughout its manufacturing process, and "hit a lot of home runs" in the early days of truly putting a focus on sustainability in the 2000s.

The company has made a 47-percent reduction in water usage, a 10-percent reduction in electricity usage and a 77-percent reduction of overall waste. Those aforementioned home runs are mostly out of the way, Danes said, with no further major improvements needed to the company's sustainability model.

Those aforementioned home runs are out of the way, Danes said, but the journey continues.

"A 40-percent reduction in water usage was just simply by putting a team together to find out that we had water that was cycling 24 hours a day, even though we were only running maybe 16 hours a day, or 10 hours a day," Danes said. "We had boiler systems that were using much more water than needed to happen. We got smarter with that."

Instead, the company is focused on "base hit" improvements, shaving off margins here and there to improve KEP's green energy practices in smaller ways.

"We do still have waste, but we recycle everything (we can)," Danes said. "You know, latex is a waste… However, we give it to recyclers and many times, we pay a recycler to take it and make something out of it, whether that's playground mulch or used in roadways, mixed in with the rubber asphalt. We don't want it to go in a dumpster."

Fortunately for Danes and KEP, latex and natural rubber are inherently circular. But Danes noted that even with the added perks, his firm will need to consistently reinvent itself as it moves further into the future.

Danes admits that the latex industry, while going strong, is no longer in its heyday. The sitting company president remembers a time before the latex allergy truly took hold, when the firm had more than 45 latex dip tubing machines going around the clock, he said.

Times are different now, and the firm is still looking for ways to reinvent itself. Dave Krupinski, Kent Elastomer Products vice president for sales and marketing, said that the company is focusing much of its sales energy on finding adjacent markets to enter into.

"We did an analysis when I came on board about a year ago," he said. "We got the leadership team and the sales team in a room, and we brainstormed and prioritized the market sectors we wanted to go after.

"We found, certainly, some adjacencies, like veterinary. We're in medical but all the things you saw (on our manufacturing floor), or a majority of them, are also used in the veterinary space, and we're not in any significant way playing in that space."

Making further inroads into the veterinary manufacturing space has been a top priority for Krupinski and the KEP sales team, but the team's primary focus for manufacturing is still the general medical space, with its new line of biopharmaceutical TPE tubing known as BioVTEX launching about a year ago.

"We have a better understanding of the roadblocks to getting people to adopt it," Krupinski said of BioVTEX. "A big one is the revalidation that they gave to go through, to switch from their current form of tubing to ours.

"We've found we've had to show the savings over time, for them to justify the expense that they'll have in the recertification process."

The firm has also been making progress in the industrial distribution market.

"You can't continue to do the same thing and expect different results," Krupinski said. "So we need to find those new opportunities, and we're going after that."

KEP also works as a design for manufacturing hub (DFM) for companies around the world in need of latex and TPE solutions. The firm works with companies to bring their "idea on a napkin" to life and then supplies them with prototype production, Danes said, in hopes that the company will stay on and upgrade to full production through KEP.

Having the ability to grow market share and product portfolio in-house has led to KEP taking a somewhat laid-back approach to the merger and acquisition market in recent years.

"We're looking to do what we do, and be good at it and expand on it," Danes said. "If we find one that fits that wheelhouse, we would certainly always be looking, and we'd be open to that. But we feel there's plenty of room to grow internally, versus another acquisition."

Looking toward 2025 and beyond, the company has held weekly meetings to make sure no stone was left unturned in terms of getting the most out of the company, and raising the bar for quality. With more than 60 years under its belt, KEP is a trusted name in latex tubing, Danes said. And as president, he is looking to grow that industry trust even further.

"Just like lean (manufacturing), our job is to prove that this is not the flavor of the month, it's not going to change. It's here to stay," Danes said. "It is definitely a system that is going to drive us forward."