Westlake Pipe & Fittings Sees Bright Future for PVC and Trenchless Technology
Houston, Texas-based Westlake Pipe & Fittings has found true success in manufacturing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe and fittings for the trenchless industry in North America — and continues to grow its successful footprint within the competitive PVC pipe market.
Pipe is what the trenchless industry is all about: upgrading, rehabilitating, replacing or installing new conduits to carry utilities to your homes and businesses. With numerous pipe options available to end-users, PVC pipe is a critical piece to the pipe puzzle, valued highly in both the rehabilitation and new construction sectors.
Westlake Pipe & Fittings is in a unique position in the pipe market, in which it offers both pipe and fittings vs. one or the other. Also, key to its current and future success and stability is that the company is part of the global, publicly traded Westlake Corp. — a $12.5 billion company with more than 15,000 employees worldwide. The company falls under Westlake’s Housing and Infrastructure Division, which generates more than $4 billion of the overall $12.5 billion total.
Although the exact revenue contribution from trenchless work is undisclosed, trenchless technology is essential to the division’s success. “At Westlake Pipe & Fittings, our entire municipal sales team, including our specification and engineering teams, is actively involved in the trenchless industry,” says Westlake Pipe & Fittings national manager for specification engineering Keith Moggach, P.Eng, MASc, who has been in the trenchless arena since 2004, getting his start at the Centre for Advancement of Trenchless Technologies (CATT).
And this trenchless work includes both the new installation and rehabilitation construction markets, primarily the horizontal directional drilling (HDD) and pipe bursting sectors. Central to its success is the Certa-Lok restrained joint PVC pipe product line, which embodies decades of trenchless expertise.
Westlake Pipe & Fittings has captured more than 30 patents on pipe and fittings technologies over the last 10 years and has applied some of these technologies to a range of new products, with more under research and development.
The company is also an active participant among several key trenchless organizations, such as NASTT chapters, as well as the Canadian Underground Infrastructure Innovation Centre (CUIIC) — allowing its employees to serve as thought leaders in the industry to help drive forward PVC pipe education.
Historically, the pipe materials market has been intensely competitive, not only among pipe types like HDPE and ductile iron but also within the PVC pipe community. This competition has driven all players to excel and significantly enhance product quality. Westlake Pipe & Fittings’ philosophy to this competition is simply: Bring it on.
Confident in its products and experienced team, Moggach says PVC and Westlake Pipe & Fittings are both poised for future growth within its company walls, as well as those within the trenchless industry. Where does that confidence come from?
“It’s the technology and project support for customers that has made us successful,” Moggach says matter-of-factly.
But beyond the pipe technology, he also attributes Westlake Pipe & Fittings’ market position to the people he works alongside every day.
“We provide consistent quality pipe and fittings solutions to ensure the job is completed successfully. Our expertise, products and experience are focused on delivering pipe and fitting systems that address our customers’ most difficult infrastructure challenges, including product longevity, ease of installation and enhancing water flow,” says Moggach, who manages a team of engineers geographically spread across North America who work with municipalities and consultants to help with design application and ensure products are specified and installed properly.
Background Story
Westlake Pipe & Fittings officially joined the PVC pipe business more than 30 years ago under the name North American Pipe Corp, purchasing its first pipe plant in Wichita Falls, Texas. From there, it continued to expand its pipe footprint across the United States through 2013 — the year that it catapulted Westlake Pipe & Fittings into the trenchless stratosphere with the purchase of CertainTeed’s market-established and recognized Certa-Lok family of restrained joint products creating North American Specialty Products.
Adding Royal Pipe & Fittings and LASCO Fittings Inc., strengthened the company’s footprint in the PVC pipe and fittings world across North America. In 2022, all of these companies were placed under the Westlake Pipe & Fittings brand.
In May, Westlake Pipe & Fittings announced plans to build a new molecular-oriented polyvinyl chloride (PVCO) pipe plant at its manufacturing site in Wichita Falls. The expansion plan includes the addition of a 190,000 sq ft-facility to the existing site facility. Company officials say that this investment will enhance the company’s product portfolio with the expansion of PVCO pipe manufacturing, an advanced molecular-oriented PVC pipe the business introduced in 2021, in Canada.
With innovation firmly anchored in the corporate culture, Westlake Pipe & Fittings is leveraging the strong foundation to enhance and improve the company further by employing new manufacturing technologies that enable high performing PVC pipe and fittings for its customers.
“Over multiple years, we expanded our distribution footprint to include combined pipe and fittings yards in strategic markets,” Moggach says. “The Westlake Pipe & Fittings brand was launched in 2022 to communicate to the market that the historically successful brands [we now have] are now part of one integrated business. We also wanted to communicate to our customers that we are a part of the larger Westlake Corp., Fortune 500 business.”
Among the key trenchless-related products are its C900 Certa-Lok (for HDD and pipe bursting) and Certa-Com trenchless conduit and Certa-Flo gravity sewer PVC systems. These systems provide service in the potable water, sewer and electric markets. “After the acquisition the Certa-Lok assets, we focused on optimizing the existing products to make them work even better for trenchless and expanding the size level that is available to what the industry was asking us for [developing the pipe up to 24 in. OD],” Moggach says.
State of the Market
Trenchless technology is a dynamic, energizing industry that continues to grow, strengthen and innovate — with PVC playing an important role in its future. As the HDD market has surged in recent years, Moggach believes Westlake Pipe & Fittings will continue to be a key player, especially with the rise of large-diameter directional drilling projects involving PVC over the past decade. “I believe that will continue to grow,” he says.
When speaking of the pipe bursting sector, Moggach says this market has been quietly building a following in the municipal world, with more cities turning to this rehab application to upgrade their aging water and sewer systems.
“There is a lot of old pipe that is made of fracturable material that is relatively easy to pipe burst,” he says. “In some cities, there is also a lack of underground space to install new pipe due to a network of existing congested underground utilities. With pipe bursting, you can reuse the space you have and replace the old leaking pipe with brand-new PVC pipe.”
With the focus on aging infrastructure, I do think that there is some untapped potential for [pipe bursting] to be utilized and as cities see success it will continue to grow,” Moggach says.
With the growth of PVC, not only in the trenchless industry, competition can be fierce, as each product type fights for market position. Moggach notes that the Utah State University study highlights this in the recent “Water Main Break Rates in the USA and Canada: A Comprehensive Study.” This 2023 report references the previous studies in 2012 and 2018 to analyze changes over time.
Moggach is comfortable with the competitive dynamics between the various pipe manufacturers and PVC companies, as long as the competition remains ethical and accurate. It is this intense competition that Moggach says is the biggest issue that the pipe market faces today — claims are not always accurate and can make it hard for customers to evaluate what the right choice is for their project.
Bottom line, “PVC has the lowest failure rate of any water main material, the lowest energy use throughout the lifecycle of major water main materials, and a conservative design life of 100 years,” Moggach says. “PVC has the largest install base of all water main materials and the added benefits of new technology like PVCO, which uses 40 percent less material to manufacture withstands greater stresses from internal pressure, has better impact performance and increased flow capacity and weighs less than comparable C900 products.”
He adds that PVCO pipe also features a lower manufacturing carbon footprint than other water main materials. Independent studies show PVCO materials have the lowest embodied energy, or the aggregate of energy expended to manufacture and transport materials, compared to other commonly used pipe options, further improving the environmental profile.
Westlake Pipe Moving Forward
Moggach sees tremendous growth for PVC going forward, especially in the trenchless municipal market. “The municipal market for trenchless technology is expected to grow at a rate outpacing conventional pipe installation,” he says. “As more and more of the water and sewer service infrastructure reaches the end of its useful life and replacement is necessary, I’m certain that trenchless solutions like pipe bursting and HDD will be the installation methods of choice to replace these products.
“I also think that segmental PVC like Certa-Lok, with its small jobsite footprint, is an ideal choice for use in these congested rehabilitation and replacement projects,” Moggach notes.
He further explains that supply chain issues that plagued and delayed the construction industry during and post-pandemic are easing, noting that resin materials are now more readily available. Though rising resin prices were a critical concern in the last few years, Moggach says those prices have since stabilized and are not a current issue in 2024.
Westlake Pipe & Fittings is excited for the future of PVC in the trenchless industry, as more opportunities for the pipe are realized.
“We continue to expand our footprint,” Moggach says. “As the existing infrastructure continues to age, no one is going to want to dig a trench in a beautiful street when there is a trenchless way to do it, either by directional drilling a new pipe or static pipe bursting the existing pipeline that was there. There are lots of benefits to trenchless that I believe will continue to help it grow and gain presence in the overall water and sewer pipe installation markets.”
“Trenchless today isn’t as big as the open-cut market but it is growing faster in terms of annual rates of growth than the open-cut water and sewer installation markets,” he adds.
Sharon M. Bueno is editor of Trenchless Technology.
