Chelsea Building Products expands to Texas

After 44 years of manufacturing at one site, Oakmont, Pa.-based Chelsea Building Products Inc. has opened its second production facility in a renovated 126,000-square-foot plant in Greenville, Texas.

Officials of the engineered profile extruder say they expanded beyond their headquarters to meet current and future demand in the south and west for vinyl and PVC composite window and door systems.

"This is historic for Chelsea Building Products considering we have operated out of the Pittsburgh area since 1975," Gary Hartman, the company's vice president of sales and marketing, said in a phone interview.

Founded as Poly-Tex Co., Chelsea sells profiles to leading fabricators and window manufacturers. The company saw sales of $80 million in the most recent year, making it the 49th largest pipe, profile and tubing extruder in North America, according to Plastics News' latest ranking.

Chelsea also manufactures composite siding, composite cellular foam moulding, railing and shutters. The Texas plant could eventually take on those products, too. However, for now, Chelsea is operating four of 15 potential extrusion lines at the facility with a focus on windows and doors.

"Chelsea has a large customer base in what we call the central south — the Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana markets — so this made a lot of sense from both a location and product standpoint," Hartman said. "It doesn't hurt to cut down the number of miles you put on product. It will be more cost efficient to ship product to Texas from Texas than Pennsylvania."

The fast-growing Dallas and Fort Worth market first brought Chelsea customers who sell to builders in the new construction market. Now demand is on the upswing from home remodelers.

"If you look historically, going back 20, 30, 40 years, it's been a predominantly aluminum market," Hartman said. "Now you've got a second or third owner of that home upgrading it and realizing that aluminum windows aren't very energy efficient. A good new construction market has become a very good replacement market as well."

Chelsea engineers help newcomers get into the vinyl window business through product development, and experienced customers refresh their offering through product line upgrades.

In March 2017, Chelsea was acquired by family-owned Aluplast GmbH, which is based in Germany. At the time, Aluplast Chairman Dirk Seitz said the acquisition was the cornerstone of a global growth strategy.

"The investments that the Aluplast group continues to make, in the expansion of Chelsea's capacity both in Pennsylvania and now Texas, demonstrate our commitment to the North American market," Seitz said in a news release.

The Oakmont site has 50 extrusion lines, according to the Aluplast website. Company officials declined to disclose how much money the expansions cost.

Aluplast leased a second plant for Chelsea last fall and was able to begin production in February because the facility had been previously used for extrusion.

"It was an interesting opportunity for us," Hartman said of the space, which began as an Atrium Cos. Inc. plant and was most recently used by Quanex Building Produtcs Corp. "After they pulled their equipment, it was vacant with space for 15 lines. We upgraded the infrastructure and we're starting out with four lines."

Chelsea uses a flexible manufacturing strategy so the new facility was designed for versatility. A work crew might extrude window and door profiles on a line one day and composite siding the next.

"We're able to flex our capacity based on demand for a product," Hartman said.

The Greenville plant has about 20 employees, including several who transferred from Oakmont or were employed by the previous occupant. Hartman said Chelsea plans to bring on a couple more lines in the third or fourth quarter.

Chelsea officials will gather with employees and customers for a grand opening reception and plant tour on April 9.