Creative Blow Mold Tooling Inc. is adding a second facility with full capabilities in the middle of the country.
The new plant in Troy, Ill., has 24,000 square feet of manufacturing space and 3,000 square feet of management space. It is located on a 5-acre plot and represents an investment of about $7 million.
"We're super excited about what we're doing and our growth trajectory, and we're doing a lot of investment not only in in bricks and mortar but equipment as well," said CEO Todd Riley.
The company has been working on the project for 15 months, and it is scheduled to be up and running at the end of the first quarter.
Lee's Summit, Mo.-based Creative plans to add more than 30 employees at the new plant near St. Louis over the next 20 months.
The company was founded in 1984 and specializes in product design and rapid prototype development, next day turnaround for emergency repairs and short lead times on new mold projects. Until recently it made tooling only for extrusion blow molding, but it has added other blow mold tooling types in the last few years.
Creative previously had a location in St. Louis, but officials said that building was not in an ideal location. Officials said the Troy location will be a draw for tool labor machinists.
The company was also moving forward with its plan to support its Unitech Precision Gage division.
"We've made commitments to some key hires to really grow the division in Troy, not as a standalone but as a tool-producing shop just in the same manner that Kansas City [Lee's Summit] is for extrusion [blow mold tooling]," said Alan Scheidt, executive managing director at Creative Blow Mold Tooling.
"It was initially set up to do support for Kansas City because we were we just needed more capacity," Scheidt said.
"We didn't expect the great responses we're having from our customers and the growth opportunities there for us to go beyond just a support role and go into a full-blown turnkey operation in Troy to work in conjunction with the Kansas City facility," Scheidt said.
The facility will have laser welding, three- and five-axis machining, horizontal milling, high-precision machining, mold assembly and refurbishment.