Resin distributor Chase Plastics broke ground June 18 on a $4 million expansion of its warehouse in South Bend, Ind.
The expansion will add 80,000 square feet to the site, which opened in 2016. That's an increase of 60 percent over its original size.
The expansion will allow Clarkston, Mich.-based Chase to add 10-12 more jobs to its current staff of 17 in South Bend. The project includes five more loading docks as well as new racking and equipment upgrades.
In a June 19 phone interview, Chase President and co-founder Kevin Chase said the expansion is needed because of "growth across the board" in the portfolio of specialty and engineering resins that the firm sells into a variety of end markets.
He added that the warehouse was designed with future growth in mind. The expansion is expected to be completed in January.
"This will allow us to put a lot of product in there," Kevin Chase said. "We'd been using more public warehousing because the [South Bend] warehouse was full. This should get us through another three to five years."
The expansion is also the result of Chase Plastics' desire to provide "outrageous service" to its customers, officials said in a news release. The project enables greater stocking capacity and the ability to offer customers value-added services, including custom blending, box to bulk, material repackaging and later cut-off times, warehouse manager Mike Hall added.
Business process manager Bob Hoff credited the city of South Bend, Majority Builders and Comerica Bank for providing Chase with "tremendous support" on the expansion.
2019 has been a big year for Chase Plastics so far. In January, the firm added specialty engineering resins from Saudi Basic Industries Inc. to its line card. Chase now offers Sabic's full line of specialty resins, including Noryl-brand PPO/PPE, Ultem-brand polyetherimide and LNP-brand compounds and copolymers. The partnership covers the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Then in April at the Plastimagen trade show in Mexico City, Chase officials said that the firm will add warehousing in Hermosillo by the end of 2019. They added that Chase plans to double the size of its Mexican sales force in the next 18 months.
Chase Plastics offers more than 20,000 grades of material from 35 resin makers and compounders.