Some companies have their name on everything. Others are equally present but most people never know. Count Avient among the latter.
Avient is a material science company, producing the materials used in everything from bow limbs to recoil pads. It’s a company with a notable and growing footprint in the shooting sports industry, even if you’re not yet familiar.
We recently had the opportunity to talk to Jesse Baird about the company, its products and its place in the industry. Baird is an avid outdoorsman and the business manager for Avient’s Outdoor High-Performance team, which focuses on specialized products that support shooting sports, power sports, and adventure gear.
SSR: What does it mean to be a material science company? What kind of materials do you make?
Baird: As an innovator of materials solutions, Avient formulates, engineers, and compounds a range of products that can specifically meet the needs of our customers, who then turn them into the finished products people handle every day.
We have two primary business segments: Specialty Engineered Materials (SEM) and Colorants, Additives, and Inks (CAI). Through the CAI side of our business, we are a leading producer of colorants for polymer materials, and our products can be found in finished products ranging from packaging to professional sports jerseys. On the SEM side of our business, our products include polymer-based materials, ranging from rigid, soft-touch, and high-performance plastics to fiberglass and carbon fiber composites and even Dyneema, the world’s strongest fiber.
SSR: How does your company fit into the shooting sports industry
Baird: Avient is a business-to-business supplier. In almost everything we do, we work behind the scenes, providing the materials that help make our customers’ products possible. The same holds true for most of our work in the shooting sports industry: while we now have some end-user-facing products, we still supply the core materials that can give our customers important advantages over their competition, including brand appeal and end-use performance.
SSR: Tell me about some of the different types of products that are made with your materials.
Baird: Both of our business segments supply to the shooting sports industry. Our unique solutions can be found in polymer-tipped ammunition, pistol frames, rifle stocks, recoil pads, magazines, and a wide range of aftermarket accessories. In the archery world, our fiberglass composites can be found within the limbs of most American-made compound bows and crossbows. Other components, including the strings, cable-guards, and archery accessories, also feature Avient materials.
We are also present in the military and law enforcement markets. With our Dyneema brand, Avient is a leading producer of materials for soft and hard body armor and has a range of structural composite armor materials solutions for military and security applications.
SSR: What makes doing business with Avient different than other large corporations?
Baird: Although Avient is a large corporation, we are structured to support our customers’ needs like a smaller company. Our agility and ability to respond rapidly helps set us apart. Another unique feature at Avient is that the people responsible for developing outdoor products are also serious end-users of these products. Whether it’s our employees at our Montrose, Colorado, site working all week on archery limbs, then chasing bugling elk in their spare time, or the team dedicated to our composite barrel technology competing in 3-gun competitions or winning 1,000-yard or extreme long range (ELR) matches, the team understands the importance of specialized products for those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
SSR: Do you develop materials and present them to manufacturers, or do they typically come to you with specific needs?
Baird: Avient can both develop materials and present them to manufacturers or respond to manufacturers’ needs when they come to us seeking specialty solutions. Our engineering teams have two distinct groups: one focused on rapid customer response to active needs, and another focused on developing new products based on our understanding and anticipation of evolving market trends.
SSR: Can you talk about some specific products you played a role in developing?
Baird: Avient has played a role in helping to develop some of the industry’s most innovative products, including the Sig Sauer TXG pistol frame, lead-free frangible ammunition, and the latest advancements in carbon fiber barrel technology, Avient’s Composite Heat Release Technology.
SSR: The popularity of carbon fiber barrels has grown along with lightweight rifles. How have you been involved?
Baird: Over the last few years, Avient’s technology team has been focusing on innovating solutions to the drawbacks of legacy carbon fiber barrel products. Our engineers have been using the principles of reverse benchmarking to provide our customers with optimized performance rather than creating a “me too” product.
Beyond the consumer shooting sports market, our technology team has developed cutting-edge Composite Heat Release technology that can meet the extreme requirements of military applications. Last year, the first successful torture test demonstrations of a composite barrel were conducted on an M240 machine gun featuring Avient’s latest-generation Composite Heat Release technology.
SSR: Are carbon fiber barrels a main focus for your company within the shooting sports market right now?
Baird: While we are committed to providing the resources and materials necessary for our customers to have the best in composite barrel technology, it’s one of many products we supply to this industry, which we actively support. Our dedicated team supports the full range of solutions that make many shooting-sports products possible.
SSR: What’s the biggest challenge, from your perspective, in producing consistent, accurate carbon fiber barrels?
Baird: The biggest challenge our team has observed with carbon fiber (and steel) barrels is managing heat during use. Heat, especially during rapid fire, will affect any barrel, but barrel design and material selection play a huge role in point-of-impact shift and in consistent results. This is where Avient’s Composite Heat Release technology stands out from the crowd. Our materials solution experts developed a specialty ceramic layer using Avient products to actively draw the heat away from the bore as soon as it’s generated by firing. Keeping the barrel consistently cooler means less deviation in muzzle velocity and more consistent accuracy, shot after shot.
SSR: Can you talk about your role in the development of the Sig TXG frame?
Baird: Polymer pistol frames often carry a stigma of being lower quality than more expensive metal frames. The Sig Sauer TXG frame is a groundbreaking innovation in pistol frames. By incorporating Avient’s Gravi-Tech Density Modified Formulation, Sig Sauer was able to achieve the best of both worlds. The tungsten-infused polymer feels and performs like a metal frame, while its injection-moldability allows for specialized design freedom and lower mass-production costs.
SSR: What goes into developing the right material for a specific application?
Baird: In the world of materials science, every product has a different set of needs depending on its application, environment, or even customer preferences. When selecting the right material for a specific need, the first thing we do is answer a comprehensive series of questions to help narrow down to the most appropriate compounds. These questions help our teams understand mechanical needs such as flexibility, stiffness, and impact resistance, as well as environmental factors such as maximum temperatures, humidity, and exposure to corrosives. Then, there are the finished-goods needs, such as color, soft touch, friction, and surface finish. Once we have these questions answered, we can begin to select the solution that will work best for each customer and application.
As an innovator of material solutions, Avient is committed to finding the right product for the application. If a new need cannot be met by our current product offering, our chemists, formulators, and engineers work to bring the right ingredients together to provide a unique solution.
SSR: What’s something no one knows about your company?
Baird: Not many people are aware of Avient’s ongoing work to make significant progress toward our 2030 sustainability goals, including meeting our renewable energy goal in 2024 and decreasing our scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas emissions by over 50% vs. 2019.
Avient’s employee volunteer work globally also reflects how we help enable a sustainable world — not just through our materials solutions, but through the actions of our people. At Avient, every employee gets 16 hours of paid volunteer time annually to support causes close to their hearts. From food banks to environmental cleanups to mentoring programs, our more than 9,000 global employees are making an impact that extends far beyond our facilities.
You can read more about our sustainability goal progress here: https://www.avient.com/company/sustainability/sustainability-report/goals-commitments/2030-goals-progress
