About PD Technology
The journey to perfection is a long and never ending journey
PD Technology first started out in New Zealand under the name of Tradelinx Webbing when Peter, a fully qualified plastics engineer, acquired a synthetic leather strap manufacturing business from an acquaintance many years ago. At the time, the business was producing a low quality product and was barely making any money. Not being happy with the quality of the product he had inherited, Peter looked at what else was available in the market place and decided to use his plastics engineering knowledge to create a product that would be superior to everything else.
Probably the most glaring deficiency with a low quality synthetic leather strap is how quickly and easily the plastic outer coating delaminates from the central webbing core. During our investigations we found that only 2 other manufacturers gave outstanding adhesion between the outer coating and the webbing, with the rest varying between poor and just about adequate. This became our first issue to address, something which turned out to be a lot harder than we imagined to achieve a cost-effective and class leading solution. In fact it took 5 years of a lot of hard work, before we had finally developed a solution and continually evaluated and refined it, culminating in our HiBOND+™ technology.
On the road to creating our all-new synthetic leather strapping, the next challenge was to create a premium quality polymer coating which was also as ecologically responsible as it could be. At this time the EU REACH regulations were being finalised, with the initial phase soon approaching, we therefore collaborated with our plastics supplier to devise a formula which would produce a polymer coating that was fully REACH compliant, yet was strong, supple, soft to touch, resistant to abrasions, chemicals and adverse weather, was highly UV stable and long lasting. This endeavour was so successful that we created our BioMER™ polymer coating, which met and surpassed all of our criteria. As far as the ecological criteria was concerned, we surpassed this by such an extent that our BioMER™ polymer is a bio-compatible polymer, which we could use to make medical products suitable for human implant.
Once we were getting ready to start some real world testing of our weldable webbing, we realised that the quality of the webbing we were purchasing was too variable and was not suitable to meet the strict regulatory demands of curtainsider trailers, which is by far the main application. Moving to a new supplier, who could guarantee a consistent high quality product would be too costly and would not allow us to produce a cost effective product. We therefore bought a high tech narrow weaving loom and started manufacturing our own webbing. This allows us to produce a consistently high quality, high tenacity, densely woven webbing strap which meets the EU regulations regarding the strength of webbing need to reinforce curtainsider trailer curtains. By slightly modifying the weave pattern, we produce an equally strong, yet thin, flat and flexible webbing strap that we use in our synthetic leather strapping.
After many, many years of hard work, PD Technology has created LeatherTECH Pro™, a synthetic leather strap that gives premium quality with unrivalled strength. Creating LeatherTECH Pro™ is not cheap, especially in New Zealand which has relatively high manufacturing costs, therefore, although we had some success within New Zealand, we have struggled to make any headway externally. So in 2016, when the lease on the factory in New Zealand was nearly up, Peter and his wife, Duan, decided to move themselves and the company to Duan's home town in Thailand, in order to benefit from greatly reduced manufacturing costs. With a new country, it was decided that a new name should follow and so PD Technology was born. The move, although hasn't been without it's problems, has ultimately proven successful and we have managed to realise significant savings in our manufacturing costs. We are still sourcing our materials from reputable, international suppliers, from their Thailand offices and manufacturing plants, and so our quality remains just as high, but we can now offer LeatherTECH Pro™ for less than other premium quality synthetic leather strapping products.