High density polyethylene pipe producer WL Plastics Corp. will invest $12 million in a new manufacturing plant on vacant land in Bulloch County, Ga., where it will create 40 jobs.
The Fort Worth, Texas-based company currently operates seven plants in the U.S. and Canada and employs 335. The new facility will be located in Statesboro — a 213-year-old college town of some 24,000 people about 55 miles from Savannah.
“We're very close to mobilizing construction right now. The plant will be operational in the fourth quarter of this year,” WL Plastics director Michael Dahl said in a telephone interview.
Statesboro topped a short list of six locations in the eastern U.S., he added.
“This is a natural extension of our national geographic growth strategy,” Dahl said. “Proximity to the port of Savannah is a bonus, no question.”
The new plant will make HDPE pipe in a broad range of diameters for the company's traditional markets, Dahl said. WL Plastics produces pipes from one-half inch to 54 inches mostly for potable water, wastewater, oil and gas, and industrial and mining but it also participates in the geothermal, landfill and nuclear market segments.
The company was founded about 15 years ago in Casper, Wyo., to offer water, sewer and industrial pipe to the Rocky Mountain region. A second plant was built in 2004 in Cedar City, Utah. Other plant acquisitions and new construction projects followed in Alberta, Canada, Bowie, Texas, Elizabethtown, Ky., Snyder, Texas, and most recently Rapid City, S.D., in 2013.
The seven current sites have more than 500 million pounds of annual production capacity a year.
