ST. LOUIS—Recycled rubber products manufacturer Ultimate RB has expanded its Delphos, Ohio, plant significantly to boost its capabilities and capacity needed to accommodate increasing demand in all market segments.
A division of St. Louis-based Accella Performance Materials Inc., Ultimate added about 10,000 square feet to the facility, a spokesman said. The company did not give the size of the site before it was expanded. Financial details also were not disclosed.
It also installed a larger manufacturing process and a state-of-the-art cutting machine at the factory, he said. With that in place, he said, capacity for specialty rolled rubber production has been expanded by 40 percent.
Specifically, the firm now will have greater capacity for specially rolled rubber flooring and underlayment production, according to Hal Stuhl, vice president of Ultimate.
The new capacity is expected to reduce lead times on specialty rolled rubber products, the firm said.
In addition to the cutting machine, a mixer/molding line and a re-roll line were installed at the Delphos factory, the spokesman said.
He said the mixer/molding line produces molded cylinders, which are cut into master rolls. The re-roll line processes the master rolls into final cut rolls specified by customers.
The scale of the equipment is 2.25 times bigger than the machinery the Delphos plant has historically had, he noted. "This means that the molded cylinders are 2.25 times bigger than the current cylinders."
The investment in the Delphos facility better meets the needs of the company's customers, Stuhl said, and is being made in response to increasing demand for the company's products.
Ultimate is one of the largest and most technically advanced tire recyclers in the world with the ability to make quality goods that contain up to 96 percent post-consumer waste, it said. The company manufactures recycled rubber flooring, tiles, mats, EPDM granules and other products.
For more than 30 years, Ultimate has been producing matting products out of recycled tires. In 1995, it developed the molding process to produce playground safety tiles, the firm said.
It was acquired by Dash Multi-Corp., a maker of custom formulated polyurethane systems and recycled rubber products, in 1999 and in late 2012 Arsenal Capital Partners bought Dash Multi-Corp.
Dash-Multi Corp. and Ultimate became part of Accella, one of Arsenal Capital Partners' primary businesses.