Blue Diamond Industries LLC purchased the assets of Roseboro, N.C.-based Plastic Tubing Inc. for an undisclosed sum March 3, effectively doubling its workforce and adding two manufacturing plants to its Lexington, Ky.-based operations.
Both of the former PTI plants are about 35,000 square feet. One is in Roseboro, while the other is in Oneonta, Ala. All of the 50 employees kept their jobs and are now on Blue Diamond's payroll.
Though Blue Diamond's wasn't the highest offer for PTI, owner Ernest Maroschak said he was influenced by Blue Diamond's assurances that the employees would be retained.
Very few changes will be made at the newly acquired plants, said Blue Diamond President Mark Stuhlreyer in a March 7 telephone interview. Blue Diamond will continue to manufacture corrugated high density polyethylene pipe for drainage applications at the former PTI plants, Stuhlreyer said.
Blue Diamond's original manufacturing plant is in Middlesboro, Ky., which produces inner duct and conduit for the utility and telecommunications industries, as well as small-diameter corrugated PE pipe.
The acquisition brings Blue Diamond's workforce to about 100.
Blue Diamond came to be in the spring of 2004 after purchasing the Middlesboro plant from Moore DP LLC's Underground Construction Products group.
Maroschak is a pioneer of corrugated PE pipe and drainage applications. He said he holds about 60 patents on products still being made today.
``That might be the real story,'' Stuhlreyer said. ``E.J. Maroschak started operating in 1969. He, along with the founders of ADS and Hancor, began an industry based on a manufacturing concept that is quite large today.''
Maroschak said the decision to sell was based on his desire to have more free time.
ADS, or Advanced Drainage Systems Inc. in Hilliard, Ohio, and Findlay, Ohio-based Hancor Inc. merged last year and make up, by far, the largest producer of HDPE pipe in North America.