Custom rotational molder Solar Plastics LLC of Delano, Minn., is building a plant in Monterrey, Mexico, to accommodate its growing business and cope with a tight labor situation in the United States.
The 55,000-square-foot plant, currently under construction, is in northeast Mexico about 140 miles south of the border town of Laredo, Texas. The facility will be in an industrial park and Solar will have the ability to expand it to more than 300,000 square feet in the long term, if necessary. Operations are to begin in the first quarter of next year, according to Solar Plastics President Sam Rosen.
The new plant will start with two machines and initially employ about 140 people.
"We'll see what it can grow into over the years," Rosen said in a Sept. 16 phone interview.
The plant will serve existing customers and the company is in talks with prospective ones. "Right now our current customers already exceed our capacity at our two facilities," Rosen said.
Solar Plastics has a 75,000-square-foot plant in Delano that runs four rotomolding machines, and a 110,000-square-foot factory in Davenport, Iowa, operating nine machines. The Delano site also houses Fluidall LLC, a separate sister company that sells some linear low density polyethylene tanks manufactured by Solar and double-wall and combination plastic-metal tanks made by other suppliers. Rosen is Fluidall's general manager.
Solar Plastics is part of Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Atek Cos., which also owns Atek Access Technologies and Atek Metal Technologies. Solar was founded in 1964 and Atek acquired its assets in late 2017.
Atek is celebrating 75 years in business this year, and Rosen said the parent firm encouraged Solar to build the state-of-the-art Monterrey facility.
"This has been a long time in the making," he said. "There were some slowdowns from COVID, and I'm really ecstatic to announce it and go into production in the new year."
In a news release, the company cited the current U.S. labor market as one reason for choosing Mexico for the new plant: "Trends in labor availability [were] a major factor into the decision to look at additional manufacturing capacity outside of [Solar's] current footprint."
Solar serves large original equipment manufacturers in the defense, automotive, lawn and garden, electrical and consumer markets, among others. Its products include motorcycle gas tanks, cooler boxes for utility task vehicles and diesel exhaust fluid tanks. The company also offers mold building, project engineering, design, assembly and post-mold foaming.
Solar ranked as the 14th-largest North American rotomolder in Plastics News' recent survey, with $38 million in annual sales. It employs 256.