1947 – 2023

The Vaupell history all started in 1947. Thank you for being a part of our success.

Vaupell has over 75 years of providing highly engineered solutions and full-product life-cycle design, development, and manufacturing services for the aerospace, defense, and medical markets

Where we started

A classic example of American entrepreneurship, Vaupell Industrial Plastics was founded in 1947 by Leonard Vaupell in the Northwest. Vaupell started by serving only the industrial plastics industry. The first parts manufactured were casters for the bottom of file cabinets for the US Army, and within a year the company began manufacturing its first part for Boeing. Vaupell flourished by exceeding the expectations of its clients and quickly earning a reputation throughout the northwest United States as the company to trust for precision plastic-molded aerospace and commercial products.

Leonard Vaupell sold the business in 1977, and over the next four decades Vaupell Industrial Plastics underwent several changes in ownership, upper management shifts, expansions, and growth acquisitions. The name was changed in 2004 from Vaupell Industrial Plastics to Vaupell, Inc. In 2014, Vaupell was acquired by Sumitomo Bakelite C.o, Ltd.

In the last four decades, success has brought us increasingly complex challenges from our clients—pushing the Vaupell team to expand into high-tech automated prototyping, production, manufacturing, and value-added services, such as product life-cycle planning, supply chain management, and final-product assembly. Today, Vaupell has seven globally recognized facilities in five US states, China, and Germany, with more than 433,500 square feet of advanced prototyping, production, and manufacturing capacity.

We are trusted by industry-leading, market-defining Fortune 100 corporations to protect the quality of their products and the integrity of their brands. Millions of lives are made better by Vaupell’s daily commitment to excellence, including air travelers, our soldiers, and medical patients undergoing tests and/or procedures.

For a company like Vaupell to thrive for 75 years in our markets is a great accomplishment. Over that time, we successfully transitioned from a precision plastic molding business to a full product life-cycle partner for specialized markets, including surgical tools and instruments, implantables and bioabsorables, drug discovery and delivery, advanced aerospace composites, and defense applications. Vaupell’s focus on continual improvement through innovation, reinvention, and reinvestment in Vaupell’s employees and capital equipment has been the key to their success and will continue to guide Vaupell for the next 25 years.

As a customer-centric, employee-driven company, Vaupell knows that their success is directly tied to the success of their clients, making them stewards of both companies. It is this culture of stewardship that drives them to continually improve their processes, discover new efficiencies, and ultimately provide value for their business partners.

Vaupell looks forward to the continued future success of all our business partners.