Zotefoams celebrates 75 years in Croydon

Zotefoams, the foam technology company, is celebrating seventy-five years of continuous production at its plant in Croydon, South London.

A Zotefoams forerunner, The Expanded Rubber Company, installed the original autoclaves on site when the manufacturing operation was moved from its Palace of Arts home in Wembley to Croydon in 1936.

At that time the unique foaming process was used for making Onazote (expanded Ebonite) and Rubazote (expanded rubber). Onazote was used for fairings, cold insulation, and lifebuoys and, when faced with plywood or metal (in early composite structures) for bulkheads, tables and flooring. Rubazote was used for primitive crash padding, cushions, shock absorbers, non-slip mats, seals and gaskets.

One of those original autoclaves remains at the Croydon site, long since retired and now preserved for posterity. It is thought to have been manufactured by Henry Berry Co Ltd a specialist machine manufacturing company who are still in business today and coincidentally were located at Croydon Works, Beza St., Leeds.

The photograph of the autoclave shop (from an open evening held in 1969) shows the autoclave in-situ and very much in operational order. The loading trolley is next to the person demonstrating the vessel, loaded with Rubazote tubing on its mandrels, ready for gassing.

The advertisement is from ''Flight'' magazine in 1938, extolling the virtues of Rubazote and Onazote... ''The lightest manufactured solid''.