Pipes and composites have been with us since ancient civilizations first developed the means to transport water and used straw to enhance mud for construction. Thousands of years later, a game-changing technique is advancing the same technology for the 21st century – born from a startup in the heart of the East Texas oilfield.
According to B.G. Clark, President of Kilgore's Composite Piping Technology, MaxDR™ is the world's first large-diameter, high-pressure, Fusible Composite Poly Pipe and is a major step-change in piping. The venture's focused development spanned more than a decade, drawing on the prime resources of a smalltown East Texas community.
"This is a Kilgore product," Clark says. “We've been able to take technology, piping that was used in the oil and gas business a century ago, and advance it with state-of-the-art equipment and materials to create a new product that's solving today's problems – doing more with less."
Lighter and easier to handle, MaxDR is thinner but has a capacity for significantly higher pressures. It's even eco-friendly, using 50 percent less material compared to its comparable ID (inside diameter) and pressure-rated high-density polyethylene pipe (HDPE, a.k.a. poly pipe). This advanced pipe is designed for liquids, gases and slurries to accommodate a wide range of applications in Oil & Gas, Industrial & Mining, Water & Wastewater, and CO2 gathering sectors.
Clark officially came on board in late November 2022, charged with bringing the company to market. He launched parallel tracks of final equipment engineering and fabrication alongside site selection and building construction at Composite Piping Technology’s FM349 headquarters. The company's 600 foot-long, 45,000 square-foot manufacturing facility was completed in Spring '24 and operations launched in November.
“We've been very lucky that the local workforce has oilfield and equipment experience, and we're able to directly apply that experience to manufacturing."
Clark says Composite Piping Technology is off to a great start with production capacity able to exceed 300 miles per year.
"Half my career has been in startups, and I've been to many locations, metro as well as rural," Clark said. "After 35 years of working throughout the United States, I can tell you I am very impressed with Kilgore."