Since its inception as a company, Plastiblok has been looking for new ways to improve building and construction as an industry. Thus, when it came up with the idea for Lok-N-Blok, it found a bold new way to do this, all based on the idea of simple solutions that can handle incredibly complex problems, earning it an award for being a ‘Leader in Sustainable Residential Construction’ in 2022 for Paducah, Kentucky. Indeed, its region has vastly benefitted from the innovations it has brought to bear, with all manner of construction companies taking advantage of the way its products simplify the workload of wall building, improving insulation in the process.

Plastiblok – the company behind Lok-N-Blok – is a design and manufacture company based out of Paducah in Kentucky. Nominally, the place of its birth as a company has played a huge role in bolstering the inspirational ingenuity that runs through its very core, with the professionals within its ranks consistently pushing the limits of what is possible in construction. This has allowed it to funnel significant effort into design, ideation, and testing, resulting in a company that creates heavily tested and highly effective products that make life easier for its professional clients, ensuring that they themselves achieve the best results for their end customers. In this manner, it has designed ‘a better way to build’.

Foremost, its idea for its flagship product came about when the minds behind it considered how a child’s building block works. Contemplating the simple design, the emphasis on each piece being part of a bigger whole, and the inherently modular nature of it, Plastiblok decided to see how it could expand this concept in order to apply it to building and construction. Thus, the Lok-N-Blok was born, a basic building block product that has become known as a truly game changing product for the worldwide construction industry and the professionals that seek to improve the field.

Employing a simple, interlocking internal system, and making use of ENVION composite material, the Lok-N-Blok allows for superior structural strength whilst still being sustainable. With each of these factors in mind, Plastiblok is proud to say that the Lok-N-Blok has become an exemplary flagship product, one that is slowly changing how construction professionals see the materials they work. Critically, the problem solvers, free-thinkers, and innovators behind Plastiblok are proud to say that many clients have been shown the benefits of Lok-N-Blok first-hand since its inception, and that many such clients have been a big part of its growth by leaving it glowing reviews or going on to recommend Plastiblok’s products to fellow peers.

This group of clientele – past and present – is hugely diverse due to the variety of benefits to using Lok-N-Blok. Fundamentally, the use of this alternative building tool costs far less than the use of traditional materials; it is also speedier, stronger, and safer, with no need to hire expensive specialist labour required for installation. Moreover, its exterior load-bearing Lok-N-Blok utilizes over 45% recycled materials, including plastic and glass, while its interior wall Lok-N-Blok utilizes over 60% recycled plastic and glass. Saving hundreds of thousands of trees and reducing carbon emissions by thousands of tonnes, it hopes to become the number one largest user of recycled polypropylene in the world – and is proud to be contributing to environmental preservation in this manner – something it hopes many more professionals in its field will join in on soon.

With a tapered dovetail design that has been produced to allow each Lok-N-Blok to work together in perfect synergy, each Blok stacks perfectly. Indeed, much like the children’s toy blocks they were based on, they have been specifically designed to be as easy as possible to put together for the construction worker, a cornerstone desire for the project in the macro scale, as construction work is such a physically and mentally demanding profession. Being the new kid on the ‘Blok’, of course, means that the industry it is approaching must have an opening or at least a receptiveness in the market for a bold new product.

For some, this has indeed been the hang-up when it comes to Plastiblok. Lok-N-Blok is, indeed, a disruptive new product, but does the market need – or indeed want – disrupting? Plastiblok and studies by professionals such as the Farnsworth Group in 2019 show that, indeed, it does, with 76% of builders being keen and interested to try products with advanced and new features. Furthermore, in 2020, HSB Magazine asked its readers a similar question, focusing on how likely it may or may not be for steel framing to emerge as a leading alternative to wood framing in construction; in this case, only 39% steadfastly said it would not happen.

This pertinently shows the need for an old industry to be taught some new tricks, and Plastiblok is certainly one of the best companies to do that, excited to be taking the age-old, prestigious construction industry into the modern epoch with a new, innovative, and vastly more sustainable product. Having found its beginnings in 1996, it has certainly come a long way since the founders considering the best way to build backyard walls. Indeed, it is the zeal with which co-founders Greg Siener and Mike Zumer dedicated themselves to consulting professionals, developing the concept for their mortar-less interlocking building block system, and testing new composite materials that allowed the Lok-N-Blok to become what it is today.

With a proactive approach that combines acclaimed engineering, architecture, material science, and more, Plastiblok subjected the initial prototypes to rigorous testing. Requiring each new development to pass International Building Code Requirements, and requiring each product to fit with the specifications demanded by the International Code Council, the Lok-N-Blok and its pioneering way technology has helped the company behind it to become an industry leader. Indeed, from this position at the head of the pack, Plastiblok has been able to take a proactive approach to encouraging the growth of its industry, and is honoured to be one of the entities shaping its future.

For business enquiries, contact Gregory Siener from Lok-N-Blok via their website – lok-n-blok.com