Commodity and engineering resin supplier Chemres LLC is expanding its Chesapeake, Va., operation.
The company, headquartered in Princeton, N.J., has already spent $3 million to add machinery and equipment at the Chesapeake site that has tripled compounding capacity. It also is expanding its railcar yard.
The operation now has 50,000 square feet of compounding space and 75,000 square feet of warehousing, said Chemres President Paul Keimig in a phone interview. The 65-acre site, a former Nova Chemicals operation, does additive and pellet blending for food-grade and medical-device resins in twin-screw extruders. Other key markets are wire and cable and consumer products. Chemres can store and package more than 30 million pounds at the facility.
"Plans are already underway to more than double the warehousing capacity and triple the rail spots," noted Chemres controller Hemant Bansal in a recent news release.
The Chesapeake operation compounds materials in quantities ranging from small samples to railcar loads. It boasts extensive laboratory facilities for quality control and full thermal and mechanical testing to provide the data customers need for technical specifications. The company has more than 30 leased railcars on site for finished products, and is expanding this activity. The site also includes a deep water port.
Chemres supplies materials globally and also provides supply chain management services, founded in 1994.
Other Chemres operations are in Jacksonville. Fla., and Guangdong, China, where it runs single- and twin-screw compounding lines with 100 million pounds of capacity per year. The China facility does underwater and strand-cut pelletizing, runs Banbury compounding lines, does physical and analytical testing and operates a pilot plant.
Chesapeake's expansion programs will create about 16 jobs, according to a news release from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's office.
Chemres' polymer materials and compounding division offers twin and single screw extrusion, Farrel composite mixing, Banbury mixing, peroxide absorption and high-intensity and mechanical blending.
The private label packaging division supplies containers, caps, enclosures and dispensers in glass and plastic for the consumer products market.
