Core product growth is driving color concentrates maker Holland Colors Americas Inc. to build a $3 million production site in Richmond, Ind.
The 42,500-square-foot building is set to open Dec. 1, Holland commercial manager Joe Gleeson said. The site will include two production lines used to make the firm's Holcobatch, Holcoprill and Holcosil products. The new building will be Holland's third on the same property in Richmond; the existing two cover a total of 60,000 square feet.
Gleeson said Holland has been pressed for space since 2002, when it leased 6,000 square feet of space at a second site in Richmond to produce Holcosil, which is geared toward the elastomers market. Another 6,000 square feet had to be leased last year to handle more Holcoprill production. Production from those leased sites will be moved to the new building.
All of Holland's products are based on a proprietary nonresin carrier, allowing them to be mixed with any plastic, Gleeson said.
Holcobatch, a microbead color concentrate, generates most of its sales into rigid PVC and bottle-grade PET for the packaging and container markets. Holcoprill has a larger particle size and more pigment concentration than Hocobatch and is designed to meet the demands of saturated, dark and opaque colors.
Holland is a unit of publicly held Holland Colours NV of Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. The U.S. operation brought in sales of about $25 million in 2003, representing about 35 percent of the firm's total.
Holland Colors Americas enjoyed sales growth of 10-12 percent in 2003 and is on track to repeat that performance this year, Gleeson said.
``A big part of our growth has just been the economy doing very well right now,'' Gleeson said in a phone interview. ``Our customers have been really strong, too.''
Gleeson added that since resin isn't used in Holland's concentrate production, the firm hasn't been affected very much by recent upswings in resin prices.
The firm employs 80 in Richmond, where it's operated since 1986. The new building is expected to create five to 10 jobs.
