ARDL prepares to expand operations

AKRON—Akron Rubber Development Laboratory Inc. is getting ready to move some of its operations to a new facility beginning later this year, but the whole relocation likely will take several more years.

In late 2016, ARDL purchased an 11-acre site in Barberton, Ohio—a suburb of Akron—that included two joined facilities with a total space of 130,000 square feet. The testing and development firm said at the time it paid $1.4 million for the property and buildings, which was part of an overall $11.5 million investment that also includes renovation of the new facilities and addition of new equipment.

The plan is to have one site to house all of ARDL's operations, which will have more room and be more efficient than the three buildings the firm currently occupies in Akron.

"We are so crowded in all of our buildings, we really have no more room for people," ARDL President Bonnie Stuck said.

ARDL wanted to remain in Akron, but it was hard to find an industrial site big enough in the city that also was suited to having labs built within.

Thus far, the family-owned firm has put new roofs on both buildings, gutted the inside of the facilities and started construction inside the Barberton structures on what will be new laboratories, she said.

It also has started the process of purchasing equipment that will go in the new site. For example, when ExxonMobil Chemical moved its former Advanced Elastomers Systems unit from Akron to Houston, she said ARDL bought a large amount of equipment from the company, including such items as lab benches and hoods, all in excellent condition and in storage at the Barberton facility.

"We're just continually adding equipment based on our needs," Stuck said. "A lot of these pieces of equipment cost over $100,000, but if the business says we need it, we want to have a budget to do that, because that's part of our growth."

Moving the operations should start later this year, but it must be done one unit at a time. "We have to keep our business open, so it has to go in stages, and we want to make sure we're not overextended," she said. "We will put far more investment in the building than what we bought it for, which is expected because we have to build high-tech labs."

The first area to move will be ARDL's engineering unit, currently housed in a separate structure down the block from ARDL's main headquarters building. That likely will move sometime this year.

Next to go will be the firm's compound development operations, which right now are located in a site in the Kenmore section of Akron. Stuck said that group should move sometime in 2019.

The physical testing unit will be the third to relocate, and last will be the chem lab, which she said will be the most difficult to move. The whole project may not be completed until between three and five years from now.

"We have a rough timeline, but that could speed up or slow down depending on the building schedule and everything else," the ARDL president said. "We hope to move over as much as we can as quick as we can, but it is going to take time. … As we get more people over there, I'll probably be splitting my time between there and here."

ARDL has been on an upward trend since 2009, she said, and the talk always had been about what it would take for the company to reach the next level.

"We are at the next level, and now it's how are we going to handle this level," Stuck said. "And that's the new building. When you go into a new building, it's change. There's a lot of challenge to it. There's a lot of outlay of money, so you want to make sure you don't overextend, and we're very conscious of that."

Work with custom mixers

Among the wide variety of services ARDL offers is working with custom mixers in various areas. While the Samples family that owns ARDL also owns custom compounder Polymerics Inc.—located nearby in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio—Stuck said that ARDL is operated independently and works with most of the custom mixers.

"It's the most challenging industry there is," she said. "The first place I look to hire a rubber chemist is out of custom mixing because they learn about everything."

She noted that chemists from tire firms will know SBR, natural rubber, polybutadiene, and maybe a bit of EPDM and butyl. But chemists dealing with the non-tire sector—as custom mixers must do—typically have knowledge of a much wider range of elastomers, including EPDM, FKMs, AEMs and ACMs, and are experienced with both sulfur- and peroxide-cured compounds.

ARDL does a lot of testing for custom mixers, as the firm is A2LA ISO 17025 accredited and ISO 9001:2008 registered. The A2LA accreditation is particularly helpful, as when mixers submit a final compound to a customer, it normally must have this approval.

"Our scope for that is huge," Stuck said. "We're audited every year for that. It takes three to four days to audit us and it's very expensive, but it's necessary. It says we're doing the testing the way we're supposed to be doing it according to the standards."

ARDL also has seen more rubber product manufacturing coming back to the U.S., a trend she said has been going on since she joined the firm in 2009. A lot of times, the customers are afraid they aren't getting what they paid for, thinking the off-shore producer may have changed formulations without approval.

So they ask ARDL to do testing. "We'll do a reverse engineering, and they may have the original formula, and it's not even close," Stuck said.

And when they do decide they want to produce something in the U.S., that often means switching over from compression molding to injection molding for labor cost savings. ARDL will then work with them to help develop a new compound more suited to the injection process.

She said ARDL has helped quite a few customers develop compounds when bringing back manufacturing to the U.S. as costs continue rising overseas, noting that most of the goods coming back are high-tech in nature.