Located on our corporate campus in Norwalk, Connecticut, the ISO 9001 certified Research and Development Division of R.T. Vanderbilt Company is commissioned to serve the Company’s customers through technical product support and through innovative product and process development. A fundamental strength of our company is the employment of technical professionals with expertise in each of the industries we serve. This allows us to address customer inquiries and to participate in our customers’ product development, process improvement and problem solving activities on a peer basis. The eleven laboratories of the Research & Development Division are informally designated as applications labs or as research & service labs. The applications labs support the sale and use of the Company’s products and develop new products and new applications. Each lab is industry oriented and works closely with the corresponding Vanderbilt sales department and its customers. The research and service labs address a broader perspective of product and process development and support. These labs function as an essential link between our manufacturing facilities and the needs and opportunities identified by our applications labs, our Sales departments and our customers. The corporate Research & Development laboratories also work closely with the Quality Control laboratories at each of the Company’s five manufacturing subsidiaries to ensure product quality and consistency.

The operation and administration of the Research & Development Division promotes close cooperation and integration of the work of all the laboratories. This has proved to be a very effective approach to applying the diverse areas of expertise among our staff to challenges presented by a particular industry or even an individual customer. It is not uncommon, for example, for our laboratories to take a chemical or mineral intended for a specific use in one industry and find unanticipated and innovative uses in others.

In addition to supporting the sale and use of the products offered by R.T. Vanderbilt Company, it is a function of R&D to discover and commercialize entirely new applications for chemicals developed and manufactured by our suppliers. This distinguishes R.T. Vanderbilt Company from other "distributors".