Agri-Industrial expands 40 percent

Agri-Industrial Plastics has steadily expanded its operations in the past 36 years, but now it?s taking a giant leap forward.

The business is building a 104,000 square-foot facility south of its current office on North 22nd Street. Company president Lori Schaefer-Weaton said it is taller than most production facilities at 28 feet tall, which she said is necessary because of the size of the blow-molding machines the company uses.

As a matter of fact, the company is adding a sixth blow-molding machine in November. It will be another six-layer fuel tank machine just like the five others the company already has. The machine is manufactured in Germany, where employees of Agri-Industrial Plastics inspect it before it is taken apart and shipped piece-by-piece to America.

Once the new blow-molding machine arrives, it will displace storage in the warehouse. That?s where the new building will come in handy, because it will be able to hold the supplies that the company would otherwise have to pay to store elsewhere. Agri-Industrial Plastics rents space from Hickenbottom Inc. because it doesn?t have enough storage even now without the sixth blow-molding machine. It rents between 50,000-75,000 square feet from Hickenbottom at any given time.

Schaefer-Weaton said the new building will contain truck docks, which she said will be a huge savings for the company. She said it is a huge hassle and expense to load and unload supplies from one storage facility to another, and with the addition of the new building, the company will be able to cut back on that significantly.

The new building will be used for storage initially, but Schaefer-Weaton said it might house an assembly line eventually.

Construction on the new building began in May and is expected to be done in November. Schaefer-Weaton said the company decided it needed a new facility between 12-24 months ago, and since then the only point of discussion was how large to make it. The size the company settled on makes the project the largest expansion in the company?s history.

Schaefer-Weaton said she is proud the general contractor, Story Construction, has hired all local firms as subcontractors.

The exterior of the building will be metal siding, and plenty of windows in the ceiling will flood the interior with natural light. The additional capacity will create 8-10 jobs at the business and increase the total square footage of the business by about 40 percent.