What Just Opened in Bristol, and Why Your Floor Spec Is Under Pressure

Supersede opened its Bristol, Indiana production facility on September 15th. One hundred thousand square feet in Elkhart County, purpose-built to supply the RV cluster that surrounds it.

The product is Marine Board, a recycled-polypropylene composite panel engineered as a direct plywood replacement. Supersede claims twice the compression strength of marine plywood, fastener retention roughly 1.7 times wood, and a formaldehyde-free, waterproof, recyclable panel with a manufacturer buyback loop already operating.

Coachmen RV (a Forest River division headquartered ten miles away in Middlebury) is already running it. As of July 1st, Marine Board is in the floor structure of the Catalina travel trailer line. Coachmen's general manager Mike Gaeddert described Coachmen as the first conventional travel trailer manufacturer to use composite decking in its floor structure.

The competitive angle worth understanding: the Patrick Industries and LCI Industries merger (confirmed June 30th at a reported $7.7 billion enterprise value) is about to give a single mega-supplier enormous leverage over component sourcing for every OEM in Elkhart County. Supersede appears to be moving to lock in direct OEM specs before Patrick-Lippert has the scale to bundle a competing flooring solution or price-pressure Coachmen away from a single-source composite supplier. Patrick and Lippert don't sell a Marine Board equivalent today, but a $7.7 billion combined entity has options a standalone supplier doesn't.

Supersede CEO Sean Petterson puts the rise in marine-grade plywood at roughly 50%, citing trade policy and geopolitical supply constraints. That figure applies to specialty marine grade, not commodity sheathing, and we haven't seen an independent index confirming that exact number. But directional pressure on marine plywood is real. If you're still spec'ing plywood into your product, the time to price out a composite alternative is before the Patrick-Lippert merger reshapes what your current suppliers charge you.

The Bristol plant is designed for ten production lines. A five-million-dollar catalytic loan from Closed Loop Partners covers the first two. Supersede will need additional financing rounds to reach full scale, and the RV market they're entering saw wholesale unit shipments fall 16% year-over-year in Q2. The case for their product is strong. Whether they can capitalize fast enough is the open question.