American Excelsior Company Celebrates 125th Anniversary

To many businesses, 2013 will be just another new business year. But, American Excelsior Company has something extra to celebrate: their 125th Anniversary.

There are not many businesses that can say that they have 125 years of business success, and if you ask American Excelsior Company, they attribute this success to the dedication of their associates and the continued innovation of their products.

American Excelsior’s roots are in manufacturing excelsior—thin strands of wood fiber which were originally used for cushioning and filtration purposes—and they are still one of the major manufacturers in the world of excelsior today.

Today, many people know American Excelsior for their innovative erosion and sediment control, packaging, flexible foam and evaporative cooling products. How did an excelsior company become so diverse? To answer that, you need to step back to the beginning…

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s excelsior wood fiber (often referred to as Wood Wool) was used for a number of cushioning applications. When you went to bed at night or sat on a chair, you were probably sitting on excelsior. When you packed your delicate china to ship in a wooden barrel, you would have used excelsior to fill the voids as cushioning.

As time went on, American Excelsior Company found other uses for excelsior such as fruit juice filtering, poultry pads and other specialty uses. When foam rubber and flexible foams came into the country from Germany in the mid-1950’s, these products started taking the place of excelsior in many cushioning applications, including furniture and bedding. American Excelsior Company had to react to the times to protect their business, and, seeing the value of these products to complement their offerings, they became one of the first companies in the United States to start fabricating flexible foams. Today, American Excelsior Company has an entire Flexible Foam Division, and is one of the largest fabricators/molders in the country.

As the company innovated applications for foam products, they never lost sight of their core product (excelsior). Two new applications for this unique and all-natural product emerged over the years: evaporative cooling pads and erosion control.

Used in a hot, arid climate like Arizona, evaporative coolers act like an air conditioning unit. They typically sit on the rooftops, and pull the hot/dry air through a dampened pad that is moistened with circulating water from the unit. The cooler, moist air is then down drafted into the home or office. The pads used inside these units are made of excelsior fibers in pre-constructed pad form to fit the walls of the cooler. The water is trickled down the pads, which becomes saturated with water. Since the company has a unique process of being able to “curl and barb” the wood fibers, it gives the pads the ability to expand, fill the voids and hold water. This process and ability is still in use today, and is why Curlex® brand products are well known to many arid markets around the world.

The erosion control market evolved in the 1960’s when a ski resort contacted American Excelsior Company in the hope of buying some bales of excelsior to spread on a slope as they were having trouble finding any to use locally. Seeing an opportunity to move some old stock of nesting pads used in poultry farms, the company offered the resort owner these pads at a discounted price, and the sale was made. The customer called back amazed at how well the excelsior held the soil in place and expedited the germination of the seeds. They wanted to order more! Once again, seeing an opportunity, American Excelsior Company went to work on ways to make the installation better for slopes, and the “rolled” Curlex excelsior blanket was born.

850 Ave. H East P.O. Box 5067 Arlington, Texas 76011 Phone 817.385.3500 Fax 817-649-7816

Over time, the Earth Science Division of American Excelsior Company was created, and today they manufacture an extensive variety of erosion and sediment control products that are produced at three manufacturing plants in the U.S. In addition, American Excelsior also has the largest independent test facility known in the world (ErosionLab) that is located in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, also home to the company’s largest manufacturing operation.

The Flexible Foam Division of American Excelsior Company continues to grow, and like wood products, they too have found new ways to innovate their products and processes. You will find these products used in such applications as sofa and chair cushions, packaging of sensitive electronics, protective gun cases, bedding applications, medical applications, recreational products, automotive… the list goes on!

Over the course of their history, the company continued to acquire other excelsior plants along with opening additional foam fabrication plants, giving them a national footprint. In 1976, American Excelsior Company became an employee-owned company (ESOP Company) which they proudly communicate to their associates and to their customers and vendors.

Today, American Excelsior Company is headquartered in Arlington, Texas, has a total of seven manufacturing locations with one of them located here in Lombard, IL and over 350 associates that continue to innovate and look for ways to assure their history of success continues.

So, the next time you are sitting in a chair, see an erosion control mat along the highway, open a box filled with foam packaging, or look up at the ceiling and see strands of wood fiber in the panel boards; you just may be seeing one of American Excelsior Company’s diverse array of products.