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About Us
Nupla Corporation is a leading U.S. manufacturer of specialty industrial-grade striking, digging and cutting tools. Since the mid ‘50s, Nupla has been a pioneer and innovator in the use of pultruded fiberglass to make the strongest and safest striking, digging and cutting tools available. Today, in its 55,000 sq. ft. Sun Valley, California facility, the company produces over 1500 hand tool products, including shovels, rakes, hoes, axes, metal-head hammers and soft-face hammers, as well as replacement handles for all of these tools. Nupla also produces Nuplaglas® Guyrod, a non-corrosive, fiberglass alternative to steel strand cable used in major infrastructure projects.
Mission
We create value for our global channels of distribution by providing the highest quality specialty striking & digging tools for their target customers.
Vision
To be the preferred global brand of specialty tools that exceeds our customers’ expectations in quality, reliability and overall value.
Values
• Innovation
• Dependability
• Accountability
• Ethical behavior
• Teamwork
• Trust
• Results oriented
History of Nupla
Nupla’s history is the saga of J. Allen Carmien, an inventive genius who recognized in the 1940s the opportunities presented by the development of plastics and related technologies. It was Carmien’s innovative uses of these technologies that earned Nupla the reputation it continues to enjoy today as the industry standard for fiberglass striking, cutting and digging tools.
The company was founded in 1938 as New Plastic Corporation in Hollywood, California. New Plastic Corp. fabricated acrylic products and produced Lucite trinkets and novelties. While acrylics were a new material and had made some inroads, plastics, which were just beginning to appear, were nothing short of revolutionary. In 1939, with World War II raging all over Europe, plastics came into their own with demands from the aircraft industry for products with high strength-to-weight ratios that plastics could achieve better than any other material available at the time. New Plastic Corp. quickly transitioned from producing novelties to making precision-machined plastic parts for warplanes. The company’s experiments resulted in dozens of patents on plastic materials and processes that propelled it to the forefront of plastics technology.
In 1943, the company entered the fiberglass business when Al Carmien, who was an employee at the time, developed and patented a coated fabric using phenolic resins. This material was used to fabricate trim tabs for North American Aviation’s P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft. The labor-intensive process to produce the aircraft part required 99% labor and 1% raw materials based on direct costs.
After the war, demand for fabricated plastic aircraft parts dried up. During this period, Carmien bought the company from its founder and changed its name to Nupla Corporation. In order to survive, the company had to quickly find a way to use the extensive plastics technology developed and perfected during the war to make a product that could benefit from those processes. However, to be successful in the civilian market Carmien needed to produce cost-competitive products. He decided to reverse the labor-to-raw-material percentage for making aircraft plastic parts by developing products that involved low labor costs but could be used with other materials, such as metal. Remembering the tremendous strength achieved using laminates with fiberglass to produce the trim tabs for the P-51 Mustang, he experimented with and patented an automated process for mixing liquid resins with fiberglass. This revolutionary process – called pultrusion – still drives Nupla today. Using the same patents and technology, Nupla has expanded its offering more than ten-fold to include new lines and products over the years.
Research and product development is ongoing. All Nupla products are the result of extensive lab and field testing. New products, often based on customer requests, result in new and more efficient products being added to Nupla’s lines. A new product can be a new grip, head weight, blade style or length of fiberglass handle. For example, the non-slip Super Grip for striking tools was designed decades ago for workers constructing the Alaska Pipeline to prevent tool slippage while working with gloves. The Super Grip is now a standard in Nupla’s hammer line. Another example is Nuplaglas Guyrod. Available in custom lengths with factory-installed end fittings, Guyrod’s high “Q” dielectric feature, tensile strength-to-weight advantage of approximately 3-to-1 over steel strand cable, non-corrosive properties, and ease of use in field installations make it an ideal and economical steel cable alternative. Since it was first marketed, over 3.5 million feet of Nuplaglas Guyrod have been installed world wide.
The company is equally proud of its concern for environmental issues, upon which management has been focused for decades. In 1994, Nupla was awarded a Certificate of Environmental Achievement from the USEPA for its efforts to prevent pollution, reduce toxic emissions and increase energy efficiency, setting an example for the rest of the industry to follow.
Today, Nupla is a leader in every market that it serves, a position it has earned by producing innovative, reliable, long-lasting products for over 65 years. Please contact us today to find out how Nupla’s unique products and capabilities can be put to work for you.