UTI Breaks Mold With New Ski-Boot Formula

When kid scientists dream, they dream of places like UTI Chemicals.

The Irvine company’s primary business is combining chemicals and patented “secret formulations” to come up with nifty new products. Products like airless automobile tires that are supposed to never go flat.

On Wednesday, UTI unveiled its latest idea--a newfangled way of manufacturing ski boots. The company said it has signed a research agreement with Nordica U.S.A., the world’s largest ski boot maker, to develop a chemical molding method for producing ski boots.

UTI Chairman Richard A. Steinke says his firm hopes to have a prototype ready by early this fall. For its part, Nordica says that it considers the UTI chemical process promising but that it’s too early to tell if it is feasible.

“We are in the early stages,” said Gary Petrich, Nordica’s western sales manager.

Currently, all ski boot manufacturers use a complicated “injection molding” process whereby polyester pellets are melted down and poured into a mold. This method isn’t very efficient, industry experts say, because up to 20% of the boots come out defective. One problem with the process is that the pellets sometimes don’t melt completely.

UTI, a small, publicly traded company, claims its so-called liquid phase technology enables ski boots to be manufactured without the bothersome heating system and the high rate of defective products. Steinke says UTI combines the chemicals isocyanate and polyol along with “a secret formulation” and then pours the mixture into a ski boot mold. The mold is spun at a high speed and the liquid solidifies.

UTI claims the equipment needed to manufacture ski boots using its technology costs only 10% of the injection-molding method. Whether skiers would benefit by paying less for their boots remains to be seen.

D. Paul Cohen, a San Francisco research analyst, calls UTI’s process “the most significant technology that I’ve seen in 30 years on Wall Street.”

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. has a contract with UTI to manufacture airless, solid tires that supposedly never go flat. Steinke boasts that “our patent alone could be worth a fortune because we have reinvented the wheel.”

But UTI’s previous predictions haven’t always come to pass. Two years ago, the company predicted it would garner at least $500 million in revenue from Goodyear between 1988 and 1993 as a result of its new tire-making process. But the company had sales from all sources of only $2 million last year, and its staff numbers only 17 people.

Steinke asserted Wednesday that the ski-boot process could generate $25 million in sales from Nordica.