Lambdapor®: Why the grey future is rosy.

“Grey EPS” is the trend: 80 percent Lambdapor® does the insulating work of 100 percent conventional EPS. You don′t need to look twice to see what this means. One look at the market statistics says it all.

It appeared as a catchword years ago; today it stands for the noticeable trend in façade insulation: grey EPS based on infrared-reflecting technology. A super-insulator such as Lambdapor is setting new standards, where technologically everything already seemed exhausted: around 20 percent better insulation for the same panel thickness. This creates new room for manoeuvre in refurbishing living spaces, practical advantages in new buildings – and improves the energy balance of EPS as an insulating material yet again.

The SPACE ADVANTAGE: Old buildings under refurbishment often offer too little space to achieve satisfactory insulation with thick insulating layers. With Lambdapor®, insulation values that meet today’s standards are now also achievable when carrying out refurbishments where space is at a premium.

The PRACTICAL ADVANTAGE: Lambdapor® also demonstrates its advantages in new buildings: The lower quantity required also means around a fifth less need for transport and storage. With narrower façade thicknesses, the dimensions of window boards and the like are also reduced.

The ECO ADVANTAGE: A statement that inspires: By completely substituting conventional EPS with grey EPS (e.g. Lambdapor®), the resources saved in Europe alone would amount to 140,000 tonnes of EPS per year.

Clever: the infrared trick. It was an old, familiar relationship that brought about the innovation of “grey EPS” in around the year 2000: Heat radiation is infrared radiation. SUNPOR director Roman Eberstaller and his team experimented with incorporating reflectors - initially fine aluminium particles – into the EPS. Says Eberstaller: “The decisive effect became apparent: Infrared radiation in the electromagnetic frequency range from 1 to 30 micrometres – and hence heat – did not pass through, but was reflected. The heat conductivity sank to where we wanted it: in the basement.”

In 2003, SUNPOR purchased the licence from BASF to realise the technical principle of infrared reflection using graphite particles. In addition to BASF, SUNPOR now produces the new “grey” generation of EPS exclusively on the market. The attempts of other competitors have so far not succeeded in meeting the technical production requirements. Lambdapor® from SUNPOR is the declared premium version: manufactured not through polymerisation, but through the comples process of extrusion, with the leading insulation performance (measured as Lambda values).

From 3 to 15 percent: the market potential. The market share of grey EPS across Europe remains at just 2 to 3 percent. However, annual growth rates point towards the current mega-trend in insulation technology: They are currently in excess of 30 percent – especially in quality-orientated markets such as France, Austria, Germany and Switzerland. SUNPOR managing director Franz Schmitzberger sees the potential of grey EPS in five years time as being five-fold, giving it a total market share of 15 percent. The company is adjusting to the boom in demand: The capacities in extrusion are currently being massively increased.