Cooper Standard Earns Environment + Energy Leader Award

The Environment + Energy Leader Awards recognize excellence in products and services that provide companies with energy and environmental benefits, and in projects implemented by companies that improved environmental or energy management and increased the bottom line.

“The Environment + Energy Leader Award for our Fortrex chemistry platform is especially significant as it recognizes our culture of innovation, our dedication to bring innovative materials to new markets, and our commitment to sustainable business,” said Chris Couch, senior vice president, chief technology and procurement officer, Cooper Standard. “I’m proud of our materials science team and their achievements in enhancing our Fortrex technology to improve product performance, sustainability benefits and overall value.”

Cooper Standard’s Fortrex material is a new class of elastomeric material for automotive sealing material innovations. Through proprietary science, it combines the best attributes of EPDM (ethylene propylene diene monomer rubber) and TPV (thermoplastic vulcanisate) materials, while eliminating their negative characteristics, the company says.

As a result, Fortrex is 30% lighter than traditional EPDM materials and 10% lighter than TPV materials, thereby reducing overall vehicle weight and improving vehicle fuel efficiency. In addition, Fortrex provides enhanced performance with low hysteresis loss (high elasticity) and offers improvements in compression set, durability, UV resistance and aesthetics compared to traditional materials. The novel materials platform is an environmentally friendly material with a carbon footprint 53% lower than traditional EPDM, low VoC, (volatile organic compounds) and no harmful nitrosamine or plasticizers.

“With a very experienced and critical judging panel and a strict set of judging criteria, entrants faced an extremely high bar to qualify for an award in 2022,” says Sarah Roberts, Environment + Energy Leader publisher.

The Environment + Energy award represents the fourth time the Fortrex materials platform has been recognized for its game-changing impact. The materials innovation previously won an Automotive News PACE (Premier Automotive Suppliers’ Contribution to Excellence) Award – often referred to as the “Academy Award for Innovation” in the automotive industry – in 2018, was a finalist for the SPE (Society of Plastics Engineers) award and won the General Motors’ Overdrive Award in the category of Sustainability in 2021.

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