Lancaster, N.Y. — Apple Rubber Products Inc. is adding 12,000 square feet to its manufacturing site in New York.
The Lancaster-based manufacturer of silicone parts recently broke ground on the project, which is designed to give the company more room to accommodate additional growth it's experiencing across all industries. The space is mostly for additional storage at the facility, which currently spans 65,000 square feet, but Materials Manager John Tranquilli said the firm will add three new rubber injection presses in addition to updating three of its liquid silicone rubber machines.
The expansion is projected to be operational sometime during the summer of 2019.
"We had another strong year," Tranquilli said at the recent Medical Design & Manufacturing show held in Anaheim, Calif.
"Our backlog is strong, so we're hoping to keep going and moving forward. All of our industries are growing. A lot of our organic compounds are seeing growth and then our medical side is also growing," Tranquilli said.
He added that 2018 was a record-setting year regarding sales for the company, which had invested heavily to support its growth. The firm added six total pieces of equipment in 2018.
The firm also upgraded its IT systems thanks to added business on the defense side and achieved NIST SP 800-171 compliance for the Department of Defense, which is the new security and privacy standard the DOD imposes upon nonfederal organizations seeking to contract with the U.S. government.
Apple also rolled out a web-based tool compliant to AS 9100 and ISO 9001 standards. Dubbed the Apple Core Enterprise System, it provides employees with access to documents such as process maps, forms, procedures, databases and work instructions.
The system went live in the summer of 2018 and so far the response has been positive, Tranquilli said.
"Getting audited by our customers, they really like the system," he said. "We just again qualified with the AS 9100. They were really impressed with the system, with how well documented it was, so we're really happy with that."