Our story
Roots to 1937, founded 1965 — by chemists who refused to tell customers their problem was unsolvable. That is still the only thing we do.
Where we started
MCPU's research lineage reaches back to 1937, when it began as the research arm of the W.S. Dickey Clay Company with the hiring of chemistry professor Elmer R. Ligon. MCPU has been manufacturing polyurethanes since the late 1950s, and MCPU Polymer Engineering was founded in 1965 to commercialize polyurethane chemistry the major producers considered uneconomical. The first products were specialty sealants and athletic-track binders. Both remain in production today.
The first polyurethane athletic running surfaces came from MCPU chemistry, and a one-part moisture-cure sealant for municipal clay-pipe joints followed in the 1970s — two products with almost nothing in common except that nobody else would formulate them.
How the catalog grew
Across five decades the playbook has not changed: a customer brings a hard formulation problem, an MCPU chemist runs at it. The catalog grows by addition — every product on it started as somebody's impossible spec.
- Iron Sentry® — CRRC-registered fluid-applied roof restoration for commercial roofs
- 350+ million pounds of polyurethane produced to date across every product line
- 2010 — Honey Bee® reactive primary-OH soy polyols: bio-content without the resilience penalty
- 2020s — Yellow Jacket™ halogen-free FR, engineered ahead of the TCPP phase-out
- Today — Biocongruent Chemistry™: service-life performance designed alongside end-of-life behavior
What we believe
- Chemistry is a service. A drum of polyol means nothing without the formulator who knows how to use it.
- Customer scale doesn't set the conversation. Pilot-batch buyers get the same chemists as Fortune-500 OEMs.
- Halogen-free, low-carbon, low-VOC — because the spec sheet is moving that way and we'd rather lead than catch up.
- U.S. manufacturing: redundant supply, rapid iteration, no ocean-freight surprises.
Start with a non-confidential summary. We'll take it from there.
Tell us the performance target in non-confidential terms. If it is a fit we put an NDA in place, review your existing formulation and specification, then move to bench development, testing, customer trial and scale-up.