SpringSeal

You don’t see it. You don’t brag about it. But if it’s missing—or not doing its job—you’ll know fast.

Let’s be honest: nobody wakes up excited to talk about gaskets. Well, except maybe for Mark Knapp.

When a drainage job goes right, the pipe gets the credit. When a job goes wrong, the pipe still gets blamed. And somewhere in the middle—quiet, unnoticed and absolutely critical—is the gasket. It’s the small component doing the big work: keeping water where it belongs, holding the joint together and helping systems perform for years after the heavy equipment has left the field.

That “little” part is exactly where SpringSeal Inc. has built its name.

Founded in 2003 by Mark Knapp, SpringSeal designs and manufactures gasket systems and sealing solutions—most notably for corrugated pipe. Knapp has been in the pipe and gasket world since the late 1980s, and he’s spent decades focused on one mission that’s simple to say but hard to pull off: make pipe joints seal better, assemble more consistently and perform longer out in the real world.

A lot of people don’t think about pipe at all. But there’s a lot that went into making that pipe—and our part is making sure that doesn’t leak.

A Company Built on Details That Matter

SpringSeal started with extrusion. In the early days, Knapp’s team extruded gasket profiles and fused them “endless” to create finished gaskets for pipe ends. But the company didn’t stay small—or single-process—for long.

Today, SpringSeal manufactures across multiple production methods, including extrusion, injection molding, thermal forming and fabrication. The business has expanded from one extrusion line to sixteen, and it now produces over 600 products across multiple industries including pipe, marine, architecture and transportation. Even with that diversification, pipe remains the company’s core. Knapp estimates pipe-related work still accounts for about 80% of what they do.

SpringSeal currently employs 84 people, most of them on the manufacturing side, with a smaller office and management team supporting engineering, quality and operations.

Growth, for SpringSeal, hasn’t been about being bigger just to be bigger. It’s been about having the capability to solve problems that pipe manufacturers and contractors actually face—especially when conditions aren’t perfect.

The “You Don’t See It” Part That Makes Everything Work

Gaskets have to keep sealing season after season—through temperature swings, exposure, settlement and all the other realities of buried infrastructure. That’s why gasket design isn’t just rubber shaped into a ring. It’s material science, geometry, installation consistency and long-term durability all packed into something most people never notice.

This is where SpringSeal’s work has helped push the industry forward.

Knapp explains that early in SpringSeal’s history, the company developed what he describes as the beginnings of the dual-durometer gasket program used by many corrugated pipe companies today—designs that combine materials with different hardness and flexibility characteristics to improve performance.

Back in those early years, it wasn’t just a matter of making a gasket that fit. The goal was to improve the entire joint system—how it assembled, how it sealed and how it held up over time.

“It was the very beginning of one of the first gasket systems like its kind in the industry,” Knapp says. “It showed higher, better performance and definitely improved the pipe industry.”

Early Work With Fratco

SpringSeal’s relationship with Fratco goes back a long way—before SpringSeal even had its name on the door.

Knapp had worked with Fratco through a previous company while supplying gasket systems, during a time when Steve (Chris’s father) was president. When Knapp founded SpringSeal in 2003, Fratco continued that working relationship and grew alongside the new venture.

“Fratco was one of the first companies we worked with,” Knapp says. “We decided to give it a shot.”

Over the years, that partnership has remained steady—built on communication, shared goals and a commitment to quality products in the field.

For Fratco, SpringSeal also provides gaskets with a recognizable red stripe—a simple detail with real value. It helps identify products in the field and supports branding at the point where contractors and distributors actually interact with it.

Solving the Installation Challenge

Even the best pipe on the market can only perform as well as its joint. And consistency in the field matters.

Installations vary. Crews move at different speeds. Weather changes. Conditions aren’t always textbook. SpringSeal works to reduce variability wherever possible—designing products that help ensure joints go together smoothly and perform reliably once they’re buried.

One example is SpringSeal’s pre-lubricated gasket film—a thin, wear-resistant coating applied over the gasket through a proprietary process referred to as slip coating.

“It lowers the coefficient of friction,” Knapp explains. “It makes it have a lubricated feel—even though it can’t be wiped off.”

The practical benefit is simple: more consistent assembly. In some cases, the film can significantly reduce the amount of additional lubrication needed in the field.

“It assures the pipe gets assembled properly,” he says. “It still will go together because the gasket has this lubrication film on it.”

It’s a small adjustment that can make a big difference in real-world conditions.

Engineering Mindset: Building the Equipment, Not Just the Product

SpringSeal isn’t only a gasket manufacturer—it’s a company that treats manufacturing itself as an engineering problem to solve.

Knapp notes that SpringSeal builds much of its own equipment in-house, including fusion and downstream systems. That approach allows the company to control its processes, protect proprietary methods and move quickly when improvements are needed.

“We design all of our own equipment here,” Knapp says. “We build machines from the ground up.”

That mindset pairs with robust quality assurance systems. SpringSeal uses laser-based measurement equipment that continuously monitors gasket profiles as they run—capturing thousands of measurements per second and flagging when production trends toward out-of-spec.

To keep throughput high, SpringSeal also runs multi-strand production methods, producing multiple gaskets simultaneously before separating them later in the process. The result is high capacity without sacrificing consistency.

Patents, Progress and Partnership

Innovation is more than a buzzword at SpringSeal. Knapp reports the company operates under approximately 26 active patents, reflecting ongoing development and refinement across sealing applications.

But what stands out most in Knapp’s perspective isn’t just technology—it’s the culture of the industry itself.

“Most of my customers are all my friends,” he says. “Even my competitors… we don’t share secrets, but we still communicate. We’re all trying to make it better for the industry.”

When asked how SpringSeal’s values align with Fratco’s, Knapp comes back to the basics: shared goals, shared commitment to quality and being there when problems need to be solved.

We’re goal oriented. We want improvements to the industry and to our products. We’re here to help them when they have an issue.

And when asked what the best benefit of working with Fratco has been?

“Very easygoing,” he says. “Very few issues. We work very well together. It’s been a pleasure.”

The Takeaway: Small Part, Big Job

Gaskets aren’t glamorous. They aren’t the part customers point to in a field or jobsite. They aren’t what gets discussed at the front of the room when a job is celebrated.

But if you’ve ever dealt with a leaky joint, an inconsistent assembly or a repair that needed to work the first time—then you already understand how important that “invisible” piece really is.

SpringSeal has spent more than two decades making sure that invisible piece does its job—quietly, consistently and for the long haul.

And in a world where water always finds the weakest point, that’s not a small thing.