Materials firm F&D Plastics is staying home and heading south at the same time.
The compounder and concentrates maker has added a second location in Leominster, Mass., and will open a new site later this year in Whitmire, S.C.
"We accelerated our planning and switched gears a little bit," CEO Darren Rosbury said in a recent phone interview. "We're trying to go after high-volume specialty compounding."
The new 42,000-square-foot location in Leominster is about 7 miles away from F&D's main production site and headquarters. The new building has three new twin-screw extrusion lines with annual production capacity of around 40 million pounds. The site employs 10 and is expected to be in full production this month, Rosbury said.
In Whitmire, F&D will begin warehousing and distribution work in August, with plans to be in full production by late 2017 or early 2018. The 50,000-square-foot site will have two extrusion lines and around 15 employees.
F&D is investing close to $3 million on the two new locations, plus new production lines at its original site in Leominster and at its plant in Quebec.
"We're doing a lot of materials for outdoor products in areas like lawn and garden and stadium seating," Rosbury said. "These are more sophisticated in dealing with different additives and UV stabilizers."
F&D posted sales of $27 million in 2016 and is on track to record sales of $30 million this year, he added. The firm makes compounds and concentrates based on a wide variety of commodity and engineering resins.
Roger Rosbury — Darren's father — founded F&D as a grinding firm in 1967. The business moved into concentrate production in 1993.
