POMPANO BEACH, FLA. - Essex Plastics Inc. of Pompano Beach plans to continue expanding the Nashville, Tenn., polyethylene film extrusion plant it bought last year. According to Essex President Aubrey Strul, the company is planning to add several film extrusion lines with capacity of 30 million pounds in Nashville next year.
The company will install the lines in a 40,000- to 50,000-square-foot addition also in the works for 1996.
Essex added a seventh extruder, a three-layer line and upgraded other lines at the facility to boost capacity by 4 million pounds per year, according to Strul. It bought the Werthan Plastics operation in November and invested about $1.5 million in equipment.
Strul said in a telephone inter-view that Essex also boosted its Pompano Beach extrusion capacity by about 5 million pounds with a few additional extruders.
The firm has 35 extrusion lines and extrusion capacity of about 110 million pounds annually, which Strul predicted will reach 140 million to 150 million pounds by the end of next year. It also makes bags at Pompano Beach.
Strul said he is evaluating potential locations for another film extrusion plant in southwestern United States and hopes to build a facility there in 1997.
His long-term plans also include building another plant in the Midwest or Northeast.
The private industrial packaging firm had sales of $70 million last year and processed 90 million pounds of PE resin. The Werthan Plastics purchase helped boost sales from $44 million in 1993.
Essex employs 285.
