ANAHEIM, Calif.—Albright Technologies Inc. has increased its silicone compression molding production capability by 40 percent through the addition of four presses as the company continues to add new customers.
Speaking at the recent Medical Design & Manufacturing show in Anaheim, Ryan Taylor, Albright director of sales and marketing, said the firm invested a little more than $50,000 in December to acquire and make some upgrades to the four Pasadena Hydraulics Inc. machines.
He said the investment is geared toward both current and future growth, with the company adding about 50 new customers in 2015.
“We're seeing tremendous growth in silicone,” Taylor said. “We have a lot of new customers who are now moving from prototype to production. And it's low volume production, so we needed the presses to accommodate that work. That growth—customers basically expanding their production—is one part of it. We also want to have a little bit of extra capacity for customers coming on board.”
Taylor said the firm is active in a number of industries, with about 50 to 60 percent of its business in medical. The company is certified ISO 13485 and operates in a Class 7 clean room to accommodate medical products.
Albright only works with silicone—liquid silicone rubber, high consistency rubber and some room temperature vulcanized silicone and high temperature vulcanized silicone rubber.
“Our core business is rapid prototyping,” Taylor said. “Our standard turn is 15 business days; if it's an overmolding job, it's 20 to 25 business days. But we also offer five and 10 days expedites. Basically at the end of that period, you're going to have in your hand engineering samples.”
The four presses are in varying sizes, which allows Albright to manufacture different kinds of parts. Albright produces parts for use in both skin contact, long-term and short-term implantable applications, among other medical-focused parts. The firm also is active in the electronics and consumer markets, but it does not have a presence in automotive.
“One of the nice things was we bought two larger presses so we can do bigger parts than what we did before,” Taylor said. “We can do parts with more depth and parts that are larger. Sometimes we get an oversized gasket where we'll need a larger size to accommodate it.”
Taylor said Albright has added three molders and an engineer in the past four months.
“We're growing,” Taylor said. “We had good growth last year, and we have plans to grow between 20 and 30 percent this year. Being in medical, people are always trying to improve lives, save people's life and extend life. It's a good niche to be in.”
Albright has operated out of a 20,000-sq.-ft. facility in Leominster, Mass., since 2007.