Best to provide Showa’s PU gloves in US

By Liz White, UT staffMenlo, Georgia-US glove maker Best Mfg will soon be selling products made in Japan by Showa Co., including the Japanese producer’s polyurethane-dipped industrial gloves. The firms have signed an exclusive agreement for Best to be the sole provider of Showa’s Hi-Tech line of hand protection in North America. Combining Showa’s top-selling line of antistatic polyurethane-coated hand protection with Best’s nitrile and cut-resistant speciality gloves creates “the most comprehensive hand protection offering aimed at … the high-end electronic assembly, computer manufacturing and material handling industries of North America,” said a Best statement. “This is a marriage of more than just complementary product lines,” explained Bill Alico, president and ceo of Best Mfg’s parent company, Tillotson Corp. “With this agreement we see … a combination of two companies built on the formula of providing the very highest quality products and customer service to the end-user,” he added. Best, a maker of PVC, latex and nitrile gloves, claims to be the second largest medical and industrial glove manufacturer in the US, and describes Showa as one of the world’s largest industrial glove makers. Showa makes a wide range of gloves from natural rubber, nitrile, PVC and nylon, and for the electronics sector provides various antistatic gloves with PU coated palms and fingertips for delicate, clean, static-free assembly of computer chips. Showa’s anti-static types include versions for both dissipation and conduction of static. Best’s Hi-Tech range also will include clean-processed and sterile versions of its own N-Dex disposable nitrile gloves and what Best calls “the world’s only 15-gauge, Level III cut-resistant glove, the T-Flex.” “Combining SHOWA’s Hi-Tech line of gloves with Best’s outstanding products will give end users the unique ability to find the exact right glove for their job in a single place, ” said George Yates, president of SHOWA Co. North America. “