Arburg to nearly double size of its U.S. headquarters

ROCKY HILL, Conn.—Arburg GmbH & Co. K.G. has started work on a 23,000-sq.-ft. expansion of its U.S. headquarters in Rocky Hill.

The Rocky Hill building is the hub for the Germany machinery maker's U.S. unit, Arburg Inc. The project will nearly double the size of the current 27,000-sq.-ft. facility, which opened in 2015.

The facility—a mini version of Arburg's main headquarters in Lossburg, Germany—has a showroom for up to seven Allrounder injection molding machines and a lab equipped with two Freeformer 3D printers.

With the expansion, the company will have more space to put together turnkey systems with full automation and room for machine preparation and customized specifications of stock machines. The extra space also will be used to stock more spare parts.Arburg also is adding a 44-ton portal crane—a bump up from the 38-ton crane it had when the facility first opened four years ago—as well as rooms for customer training and technical seminars and more office space.

Arburg held a June 14 groundbreaking ceremony for the project, which it called a "notable investment into the infrastructure" for the U.S. subsidiary.

"Our business in the U.S. developed considerably faster and better than expected in recent years," Friedrich Kanz, CEO of Arburg Inc., said in a statement.

Kanz, in a June 25 news release, said the Rocky Hill building had reached its capacity limits, referring to the company's quick growth as a "delightful problem."

The U.S. is Arburg's largest export market. The company said it supports 13,000 installed injection molding machines in the U.S., Canada and the Mexican border region.

In addition to the Rocky Hill location, the company has technology centers in Irvine, Calif., and Elgin, Ill. The U.S. operation employs 105.