North Carolina's Sapona Plastics LLC is expanding in two locations.
The manufacturer of housewares and personal care products is adding five new injection presses to its 52,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Asheboro, and moving some manufacturing operations to a former bean cannery in nearby Seagrove, where it currently leases space for warehousing and distribution.
That building is being purchased by the Lail family, which owns 50 percent of Sapona Plastics, a joint venture between the family and textile company Sapona Manufacturing Co. Inc.
Sapona Plastics will continue to lease the space, and expand its footprint there from 30,000 to 90,000 square feet, said Dean Lail, president of Sapona Plastics.
Sapona plans to manufacture brushes at the Seagrove facility, and run a sublimation printing operation. The space will also continue to be used for warehousing.
“It has a lot of dock doors,” Lail said of the Seagrove space. “Our largest ship-to customer is Wal-Mart, and we're shipping everything out of two dock doors from our current facility. It's awfully hard to ship to Wal-Mart out of two dock doors. It's just not enough space.”
Sapona is pursuing a Building Reuse Grant from the North Carolina Department of Commerce to help pay for repairs and upgrades to the ageing Seagrove building. The company plans to add 25 jobs company-wide to its current staff of 140.
In Asheboro Sapona operates 21 injection presses ranging from 35 tons to 720 tons in clamping force. The five new machines are 33-ton Milacron presses, geared for a telecommunications product.
Sapona Plastics has $15 million in annual sales.
