Silver-Line Plastics Corp. is investing $10 million over the next five years at its Lawton, Okla., manufacturing plant to double the size of the facility to 150,000-square feet and add extrusion lines and indoor storage space for its pipe and tubing products.
The expansion also will create new jobs, bringing the workforce there to about 80 in the next few years.
Based in Asheville, N.C., Silver-Line serves the irrigation, plumbing, electrical, utility and industrial markets with pipes, conduit and gasket joints made of PVC, chlorinated PVC, polyethylene and cross-linked PE.
The company, which was founded in 1962, also has a production facility in Fort Pierce, Fla.
The Lawton plant makes PVC pipe for irrigation, water well, sewer, and drain, waste and vent applications as well as high density PE pipe and tubing for gas, irrigation and water services, Silver-Line human resources manager Bryan Dover said in an email. No one particular product is driving the growth, he added.
“We've experienced strong growth across our entire product line in all of the market areas we are servicing from Lawton,” Dover said, listing 10 states in the region where customers are located.
Construction on the 75,000-square-foot building addition will start in the third quarter.
“When we were first ready to expand outside our home state of North Carolina 15 years ago, we chose Lawton for its business-friendly environment, strategic location, and people,” President and CEO Ricky Silver said in a news release. “We look forward to growing our business in Lawton for many years to come.”
Silver-Line ranks at No. 34 in Plastics News' most recent survey of North American pipe, profile and tubing extruders, with estimated sales of $120 million.
Local officials are looking forward to the increased spending power of Silver-Line's growing number of employees. Every new manufacturing job tends to create almost one additional job in the community, according to Keith Bridges, director of economic development and recruitment at Great Plains Technology Center.
“We anticipate the company will increase its annual payroll to about $3.5 million a year,” he said in the news release.
