dlhBowles opens assembly plant in Mexico, closing Ohio plant

Automotive supplier dlhBowles has opened a 280,000-square-foot assembly plant in Reynosa, Mexico.

“That was a greenfield facility that we built from the ground up,” said CEO John Saxon. The Reynosa plant was designed to be a world benchmark plastic assembly facility for efficiency and cost effectiveness. He said dlhBowles is not releasing dollar amounts of the investment.

The private equity-owned company formed in mid-2015, when Morganthaler Private Equity purchased Canton, Ohio-based DLH Industries Inc. and merged it with another company it owned, Bowles Fluidics Corp. in Columbia, Md.

Saxon said the Reynosa factory was built by the two joined companies. Bowles Fluidics had already run another Mexico assembly plant, in Fresnillo, he said. Both operations in Mexico also do extrusion, and source injection molded fittings and other parts from dlhBowles' U.S. plants.

“We're growing dramatically. We are absolutely experiencing tremendous growth,” he said.

The company makes components for handling automotive fluids, such as hoses and nozzles for windshield washer systems, which are then turned into finished assemblies. The company also has expanded into other automotive areas, including actuation systems for turbochargers, vacuum brake-assist assemblies and the growing market of special washing systems for cameras and sensors in cars.

Saxon said the Reynosa factory, which opened in January, employs about 580. It was designed for up to 2,400 employees.

The opening of the Reynosa factory is not directly related to dlhBowles' decision to close an assembly plant in Carrollton, Ohio, and lay off 94 people by March 31.

Saxon said the Carrollton work will be absorbed into other existing manufacturing facilities in Ohio, Maryland and Mexico.

Carrollton is a small city southeast of Canton that has seen other recent closings that cost jobs. But a local economic development official is upbeat about luring future plastics-related companies to Carroll County.

State officials were notified by dlhBowles Aug. 8 that the company was shuttering the plant. Saxon said Carrollton's main product was powertrain assemblies, including positive crank case and evaporative emission tube forming and final assembly, and other parts.

For Carroll County, the dlhBowles factory closure is the third shutdown since late last year. Atkore International closed its Heritage Plastics plant at the end of 2016 — cutting 75 jobs at the PVC pipe and conduit extruder. Carrollton resident Charles McCort founded Heritage Plastics in 1992 and sold the company to Atkore in 2013.

Tait Carter, Carroll County economic development director, said a grocery store closing cost 70 more jobs in February.

But Carter is optimistic about luring future plastics companies. The old Heritage Plastics plant is attractive, since it's already set up for plastics processing, she said. The small county is beefing up its infrastructure and plant locations.

Carroll County also is well-placed in the Utica shale region, near a large processing plant and hub in Scio, Ohio, and the future plastics and petrochemicals cracking plant that Shell Chemicals plans to build in Monaca, Pa.

And a 215-mile pipeline will run through Carroll County to bring ethane gas from a processing facility in Cadiz, Ohio, to an existing pipeline that crosses into Michigan, and then on to Nova Chemicals Corp.'s cracker complex in Windsor, Ontario.

Carter said the pipeline, Scio hub and ongoing fracking operations could help lure more manufacturing, including plastics, to Carroll County.

“A lot of downstream companies are interested in locating along the ethane line,” she said.

Carroll County officials exhibited at a petrochemical conference in Pittsburgh in June. The message, she said: Get the county in shape to attract future factories.