A French-owned supplier of baby changing facilities to Disneyland Paris, other leading attractions and global retailers has engaged UK plastics moulding specialist, Tecni-Form Ltd, to manufacture their latest product.

The new generation Secure Mat is a flexible, soft but hardwearing polyurethane mat that attaches to the surface of a changing table. Tecni-Form succeeded, where other moulders failed, in proving to Babypoint that they could manufacture the new changing mat to a consistently high quality.

The mat’s reaction injection moulding (RIM) process is technically demanding and convinced the designers to switch production to Tecni-Form, a company with experience of countless, challenging rotomoulding and RIM projects. In a two-stage process, an anti-microbial surface coating is first sprayed into the mould tool to create the required colour-matched finish. This is followed by the injection of a self-skinning PU foam, which forms an open-cell structure, and incorporates a bonded-in elastomer seal.

The whole operation demands accuracy to produce a consistent cross section in the colour coat, skin layer and foam ‘cushion’ layer. Processing parameters are tightly controlled to ensure that the finished mats are consistent in compression modulus, resilience and appearance.

The RIM process is a new manufacturing approach for this type of mat, which is just one of Babypoint’s range of changing products for airports, restaurants, retailers and other public amenities. Foam mats were previously topped by a vinyl leather cloth material, in an outdated, expensive and problematic process.

The new mat has been successfully tested to European Toy Safety Standard EN71-3:2013 & A1:2014 and is the latest in a number of Babypoint products made by Tecni-Form, including wall mounted, polypropylene changing tables produced by rotational moulding.