GE Polymershapes has completed a $500,000 expansion of its distribution center in Coppell, Texas.
The 100,000-square-foot, 45-employee site added vacuum forming, drape forming, bench fabrication, guillotine shearing and computer numerically controlled routing of sheet, rod, tubing and film to its services. The expansion created six new jobs.
``A large portion of our customers said they wanted us to do fabricating for them so they wouldn't have to do it for themselves,'' GE Polymershapes spokesman Patrick Brennan said.
The Coppell site, acquired as part of GE Plastics' 2000 purchase of Cadillac Plastics from M.A. Hanna Co., had offered minimal fabrication before the expansion.
>From Coppell, GE Polymershapes can provide next-day service to Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma, as well as two-day service to New Mexico and Colorado. The site stocks more than 1,800 items and has an average of $5.5 million in product inventory.
Products supplied from Coppell are used in applications ranging from retail signs to helicopter windshields to newspaper boxes, Brennan said. GE Polymershapes also offers Lexgard, a line of bullet-resistant polycarbonate laminates used in security applications at prisons, banks, convenience stores, gas stations and fast-food restaurants.
The acquisition of Cadillac - and of Commercial Plastics & Supply Corp. later that same year - gave GE about 150 shapes distribution sites. After consolidating multiple sites in some markets, GE Polymershapes now operates 120 locations. In addition to Coppell, Huntersville, N.C.-based GE Polymershapes operates regional hubs in Chicago; Atlanta; Harrisburg, Pa.; Fresno, Calif.; and Providence, R.I.
Operating as part of Pittsfield, Mass.-based GE Plastics, GE Polymershapes posted sales of about $700 million in 2001.
GE Plastics products account for about 30 percent of business at GE Polymershapes, which employs 2,000 at 120 locations in 17 countries.