Rymbal drives footwear innovation with recycled PU tech

In an industry long reliant on imported chemicals, homegrown polyurethane manufacturer Rymbal is making significant strides by developing customized polyurethanes aimed specifically for domestic manufacturing needs. Founded six years ago with a dedicated manufacturing plant and an R&D center, the company aims to address a mismatch in raw material performance. “We started by setting up a plant and an R&D center to manufacture polyurethanes designed specifically for Indian customers, Indian feet, and Indian climatic conditions,” said Neeraj Garg, Co-founder and Director of Rymbal, speaking on the sidelines of the India International Footwear Fair (IIFF) 2026. “Prior to our entry, polyurethane was largely being imported from other parts of the world, mainly Europe and China. Europe is far colder than India, which is hot and humid, causing imported polyurethanes to break down. We innovated and developed chemistries tailored to hot and humid conditions, formulations that do not break down and provide strong, long-lasting performance over time.”

This focus on localized chemistry addresses a major segment of India’s massive footwear output, which currently stands between 2,200 and 2,500 million pairs annually. With polyurethane (PU) accounting for 27 per cent of all soling materials used nationally, the sheer volume of waste generated had long remained unaddressed. Recognizing this gap, Rymbal turned its research capabilities toward material recovery. “Crucially, these materials were not being recycled,” Garg explained. “We set up our R&D unit to recover raw materials from PU waste and feed them back into the mainstream manufacturing process as feedstock to produce fresh polyurethane systems. This initiative is performing exceptionally well. The products displayed at our booth are made with this recycled PU system; their performance is excellent, and we are receiving a strong market response.”

The material versatility of polyurethane allows it to cater to an expansive range of product categories across the footwear spectrum. Garg highlighted that PU can be engineered across extreme density and hardness gradients, ranging “from as soft as honey to as hard as wood,” making it suitable for delicate children’s footwear, rigid platform soles, thick yet lightweight women's fashion soles, high-performance trekking shoes, and military combat boots. While ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) continues to hold a dominant share in budget sports shoes and daily slippers due to cost considerations, Rymbal is pushing technological boundaries to compete in performance athletic footwear. Garg noted that while PU remains a premium material, recent developments have yielded specialized formulations that deliver high rebound resilience, the critical bounce-back property required for athletic applications—opening new avenues for domestic adoption.

Rymbal’s focus on specialized formulation and sustainable recovery has translated into steady business expansion, with the company maintaining an average annual growth rate of 30 per cent over recent years. Apart from its expanding domestic footprint, the firm exports to regional and international destinations, including Turkey, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal, while actively developing markets in Italy and other European countries . Moreover, Rymbal has eliminated toxic substances from its production chemistry, utilizing environmentally friendly raw materials to reduce the overall ecological burden associated with synthetic component manufacturing.

Talking about broader footwear manufacturing , Garg pointed out that while India possesses strong underlying fundamentals, including specialized design institutes, a vast young workforce, and capital-ready enterprises, the broader market continues to face structural issues. The present consumer and manufacturing sentiment is price sensitivity that prioritize low-cost economy footwear and leaving limited initial volume scale for premium domestic production. As a result, high-style and higher-priced footwear options continue to be largely imported. To bridge these structural gaps and build local manufacturing capability, Garg underlined the need for targeted policy support. “The government should focus on rewarding local production through PLI schemes, bringing in a dedicated National Policy for Footwear Manufacturing, and incentivizing investment in component manufacturing,” he recommended, stressing that such an overarching framework must actively encourage the utilization of domestic resources, local components, and homegrown raw materials.