Bulldog Pipe investing $7M to expand to North Carolina

Mountain Grove, Mo.-based Bulldog Pipe LLC will invest almost $7 million to renovate a vacant industrial site in Aberdeen, N.C., into its second manufacturing plant as the young business grows with customers.

The veteran- and family-owned company began extruding high density polyethylene pipe in Missouri in June 2020 — three months into the COVID-19 pandemic — for the telecommunications, power utility, electrical, and oil and gas markets.

"We had already issued our [purchase orders] and down payments for the building and equipment before the pandemic started so there was no looking back," Brandon McIntosh, Bulldog Pipe's director of strategic planning, operations, procurement and purchasing, said in an email.

Named after the Marine Corps mascot, Bulldog Pipe opened to strong demand for conduit as the need for U.S. infrastructure improvements became apparent during pandemic lockdowns. Almost overnight, homeowners, schools, businesses and government agencies turned to remote learning and working.

Bulldog Pipe is promoted as the only veteran-owned PE pipe manufacturer providing solutions and products for America's demanding infrastructure needs.

However, the growth at Bulldog Pipe is mostly related to the staff sourcing quality material and only taking orders that can be produced and delivered on time, according to McIntosh.

"We have a number of partners that want to expand their business with us and others that want to start to do business with us, and that's the demand driving this second plant," McIntosh said. "Before our recent expansions, we turned down significant volumes and continue to only take on new customers as we have capacity. We understand this is a different approach. We call it the Bulldog Pipe difference. We choose to under promise and over deliver."

To boost capacity, Bulldog Pipe is leasing a 60,000-square-foot building in Aberdeen that has been shuttered for seven years. The company currently is investing $2.7 million into the site, mostly for extrusion equipment. Another $4 million will be invested through 2023, McIntosh said.

Bulldog Pipe officials expect to initially create 26 new full-time jobs in Aberdeen with an average annual wage of $50,675 for the first year.

McIntosh doesn't foresee labor issues. He pointed to hiring enticements, such as monthly profit-sharing bonuses, a holiday bonus, paid insurance and paid gym membership, as well as a management mission "to do the best we can" by employees.

"Our entire team, including those in leadership, work hard and work together," McIntosh said. "That kind of reputation gets around in our communities and appeals to employees looking to be valued members of a team. The leadership is in the plant installing lines and working on upgrades alongside the production team. The production floor is where it all happens, and our team members see us there."

Bulldog Pipe currently has 31 full-time employees at the Missouri facility.

For the North Carolina plant, the company is hiring supervisors, maintenance personnel and production operators. The company expects to grow to 55 full-time employees in Aberdeen, according to a news release from Moore County Partners in Progress Economic Development.

The project has received a $125,000 Building Reuse Grant from the N.C. Department of Commerce. The grant will be used to offset the projected $523,000 expense to renovate the facility to accommodate Bulldog Pipe operations.

The commerce department also approved $247,445 in sales tax exemptions from purchases of new machinery and equipment as well as workforce training valued at $39,000 through the N.C. Community College System's Customized Training Program.

Sandhills Community College will work with the company at the local level to develop a comprehensive training plan to meet the company's specific workforce development requirements.

"The building on Taylor Street sat vacant for seven years, so we're excited that Bulldog Pipe will not only bring new jobs and significant capital investment to the area, but they will also put an idle building back to productive use," Natalie Hawkins, executive director of Partners in Progress, said in a news release.

Bulldog Pipe owes some of its success to being a veteran- and family-owned business, according to McIntosh. He served as a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1995-99, got into the plastics industry as a shift supervisor at an Ameriduct HDPE pipe plant in 2000, then volunteered for a Marine recruiting post in 2002 and moved on to other companies.

His brother Tyler McIntosh is the Missouri plant manager and a Marine veteran who served as a platoon sergeant from 2009-15; his brother Weston McIntosh is a plant manager of the Missouri location and also a Marine veteran; his sister, Lisa Harter, heads up finance and sales; and his wife, Kristy McIntosh, is the company's sales and marketing specialist.

"We don't have a board of investors we report to; we report to our customers. It's important to us that our customers are successful," Brandon McIntosh said. "A win for them is a win for us."

The company name and mascot pay homage to the Marines. Less than a month after Bulldog Pipe kicked off production, Liberty the Bulldog was born on July 4, 2020.

Kristy McIntosh described her duties: "When Liberty the Bulldog isn't snoring on the living room floor or playing in the backyard with her kids, she's the face of Bulldog Pipe."

After he was discharged from the Marines, Brandon McIntosh began working in the HDPE pipe extrusion segment of the plastics industry. He said he started as a line operator in a greenfield extrusion plant and worked his way up through those ranks to manufacturing director and head of maintenance for a large pipe producer.

The career experience on his LinkedIn page shows Alpla Group, Dura-Line and Kraft Foods Group in addition to Ameriduct. Tyler McIntosh also worked for Dura-Line.

The pandemic lockdowns posed one of the family's biggest challenges in launching Bulldog Pipe.

"We did a lot of old-school cold calling," Brandon McIntosh said. "We are family-owned, so we know we're never going to have the most financial capital, but we're confident no one can out-work us."