Weir Minerals North America announced that the Durex wire screen media product line is celebrating 50 years of excellence in 2015. The Durex product facility, based in Luck, Wis., is proud of the reputation it has earned during the past half-century of successfully meeting and exceeding customer needs in the aggregates and mining industries, according to the company.
Durex Products, Inc. was founded in 1965 by R.D. Scarlett, a former Fortune 500 company executive and civil engineer. In an already highly competitive aggregate screening market, where woven wire screen cloth was viewed as merely a commodity, Scarlett saw an opportunity to successfully apply innovative product development with superior customer service .
The company initially offered woven wire screens out of its facility in Luck and quickly gained market share by aggressively serving the needs of sand and gravel and crushed stone customers in Wisconsin and Minnesota with prompt delivery, quality products and a willingness to help producers solve difficult screening challenges.
In the early 1970s, Durex Products expanded farther into the Midwest, North Atlantic and southeastern United States. During the mid-1970s, as new technology was developed in the manufacture of longer lasting screens, Durex Products saw the potential of synthetic screen media to increase wear life and reduce maintenance costs for its customers. The company expanded its production line to include polyurethane screen media.
Over the following decade, it became apparent to the engineers and application experts at Durex Products that not all screening challenges could be solved with wire cloth or polyurethane screen surfaces. In 1986, the company added a rubber screen manufacturing line.
By the early 1990s, with its full line of woven wire, vulcanized rubber and molded polyurethane screens, Durex Products was positioned to provide extremely cost-effective, production-enhancing solutions for its customers in North America.
During the past 50 years, and even as Durex products subsequently became a part of the Weir Minerals line-up, the brand has continued to maintain its reputation for product innovation. Rubber and molded polyurethane screens and wear products subsequently became marketed under the Linatex brand of products, which is transitioning to a new state-of-the art R&D and manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. The Durex and Linatex brands from Weir Minerals provide a full offering of screen media products with a legacy of engineering excellence, the company said.
Weir Minerals, www.weirminerals.com