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The truth behind PVC Paver Moulds
Interlocking paver blocks have seen many sea changes in its existence. The changing nature of the industry ensures that no combination or permutation is left untested in producing great results. Traditionally, interlocking tiles and associated products were made with press mechanisms that neither had the strength or the finesse that was required for the success for products.
Eventually, innovators came up with a new product to produce great looking and strong paving block designs and moulds. The innovation here was simple: make interlocking pavers from rubber moulds. The catch, however was that rubber, a natural polymer is soft. The applications for concrete pavers designs required that mould be rigid yet flexible. With years of R and D, Usha Rubbers created a proprietary blend of Natural Rubber with a few chemicals to produce a multi layered rubber mould for paving blocks. Our own Synthetic Inner Layer (a feature that has not been replicated by our competitors) ensures that exact recreation of the mould on the finished concrete paver design. The strength and flexibility of natural rubber combined with the desired properties or making interlocking tiles design as perfect as possible made the ideal product for the discerning consumer.
Seeing the potential growth in the industry, newer players wanted to quickly enter the market and maximize their returns. But how could they enter a market that was dominated by the ideal product? Simple. Sacrifice quality for market share. This hunt for a cheaper and less effective replacement lead them to the third most used synthetic polymer in the world: PVC or Poly Vinyl Chloride.
The requirement for vibroform concrete pavers moulding products is that it has to be rigid and flexible. The primary feature of PVC is that it is either only rigid or only flexible. You cannot make an all flexible PVC mould and you cannot make an all rigid PVC mould. How then to sell your customers on PVC? That is when the genius marketers decided to come up with the term Rubberized PVC. Rubberized PVC moulds are, to put it simply, a falsehood.
There is no amount of rubber or not even an iota of rubber processing involved in the creation of Rubberized PVC moulds. IT IS JUST A MARKETING STUNT. By co opting the word ‘rubberized’ into an inferior product, the sellers of such products have successfully tried to gain market share. Given below is a table that compares the key features of Rubber Moulds for Concrete Pavers and PVC moulds for Concrete Paving blocks.
One glance at this fact sheet and you can easily tell which the ideal product is. Rubber continues to be the ideal product for someone who wants to manufacture wet cast cement blocks in the long run. Plastic, in the form of moulds made only using 100% Polypropylene (PP), comes a close second, albeit for a shorter duration. PVC moulds are closer to the older press mechanisms in function. It is to avoid this bad name that PVC moulds are rebranded as ‘Rubberized PVC Moulds’. Thousands of consumers run behind the apparent reduction in upfront cost and unwittingly buy a losing proposition. The cost of replacing defective products made from PVC moulds will easily outweigh the difference in prices in Rubber Moulds. A discerning, well informed customer will automatically choose Rubber Moulds or Plastic Moulds for Designer tiles. A simpler customer will fall for marketing gimmicks.
What kind of customer are you?