A new R&D partnership with Chinese foam specialist Shincell takes PUMA’s NITRO development into China – deepening the brand’s strategic ties in the country at a moment when its ownership future remains in discussion.
PUMA has signed a research and development agreement with Shincell New Materials Co. Ltd., a Chinese materials company specializing in advanced foam technology, to develop the next generation of its NITRO running foam platform. As part of the arrangement, the two companies will establish a dedicated laboratory in Suzhou, China, where new foam compositions will be tested before reaching commercial production. PUMA expects the first products to result from the collaboration within upcoming seasons.
The deal was announced March 4 from PUMA’s headquarters in Herzogenaurach.
Shincell’s process: atmosphere-powered foam
What Shincell brings to the table is a distinctive manufacturing approach. The company uses a purely physical foaming method – relying on gases commonly found in the earth’s atmosphere to expand plastics by trapping micro and nano bubbles within the material, rather than chemical blowing agents used in conventional processes. That approach produces lightweight, high-performance foam while reducing reliance on chemical inputs, giving the partnership an incidental sustainability dimension alongside its performance objectives.
NITRO: PUMA’s running platform since 2021
PUMA introduced NITRO in early 2021 as the cornerstone of a strategic repositioning of its entire performance running range. Designed to be extremely lightweight and highly responsive, the foam is intended to reduce energy expenditure over distance – a performance claim the brand has worked to validate in competitive settings. At recent major marathons in Boston, London and New York, PUMA deployed more than 250 athletes to race in its Fast-R NITRO Elite and Deviate NITRO Elite footwear. Close to 100 of those runners set personal bests, and 48 improved their previous times by three minutes or more.
The NITRO platform has since expanded well beyond running, and now features in parts of PUMA’s performance lineup across Training, Football, Basketball and Golf – making it one of the most widely applied proprietary technologies in the brand’s portfolio.
NITRO in China, as Anta takes the wheel
The Suzhou laboratory arrives weeks after Anta Sports Products confirmed it would acquire a 29.06 percent stake in PUMA from Groupe Artémis for €1.5 billion ($1.8 billion), becoming the brand’s largest shareholder. The deal is expected to close by end of 2026.
Against that backdrop, a Chinese R&D partnership of this kind takes on additional strategic weight. Anta’s stated rationale for the acquisition explicitly includes unlocking PUMA’s potential in China, a market where the brand has historically underperformed relative to its global footprint. A dedicated materials laboratory in Suzhou – developed with a local foam specialist – is exactly the kind of on-the-ground technical infrastructure that could support that ambition, placing PUMA’s most commercially significant performance platform closer to the supply chain capabilities and innovation clusters that Anta knows well.
About Shincell New Materials
Shincell New Materials Co. Ltd. is a China-based company specializing in sustainable foaming technologies and lightweight high-performance foam materials. Its physical foaming process – which replaces chemical blowing agents with atmospheric gases – is designed for high-performance sportswear applications.
