Blow molder Apex Plastics recently invested $1.5 million in expansion projects for future growth.
The Brookfield, Mo., company added floor space, installed new resin silos and a new cooling tower and boosted its maintenance shop. The projects were completed in August.
“We've seen growth in the past few years and we used up all our production space,” explained Apex President Damon Neff in a phone interview. Building additions and plant reconfiguring will allow streamlining of operations and room for additional blow molding machines when sales warrant in the next expansion phase, he added.
“Past modifications were made to the plant simply to bring us up to speed to meet client needs at that time,” Neff recalled. “The new space will accommodate a wide range of anticipated client needs and allow us to creatively engineer project efficiency as we head into the last half of the 2010s.”
Apex runs 10 extrusion blow molders. In 2012 and 2013 it bought new Bekum blow molders and retired a few older ones to achieve overall modernization and capacity expansion. In the past three years Apex invested about $4 million to upgrade and expand.
About 90 percent of Apex's output is polyethylene and polypropylene bottles sold for consumer goods packaging and for industrial and agricultural markets. The rest of its production comprises blow molded industrial products. It specializes in low-cost, high-quality custom and proprietary bottles and shapes.
Neff said Apex's floor space has grown to 33,500 square feet. Apex announced Sept. 22 that it added 2,500 square feet to its production and warehouse areas and another 2,000 square feet of office space. Remodeling projects included improving insulation and structural changes to improve the building's environmental efficiency.
Apex employs about 35 and predicts its sales will reach $4.8 million this year. The company has been owned since 1993 by PCE Inc., a private corporation in Lincoln, Neb., with other plastics operations in injection molding and profile extrusion and businesses in data center infrastructure management.