Mountville Rubber launches $22 million expansion, rebranding

PITTSBURGH—Mountville Rubber has plans to exceed expectations. And it's investing $22 million on an expansion that proves it.

The LaGrange, Ga., based custom mixer is adding a new mixing line to its operations, while refreshing its look with a rebrand.

The three-phase expansion launches with the construction of a new warehouse, followed by moving out the old warehouse to the new space. Once that is complete, renovations will begin for the new mixing line.

All-told, the project adds 32,000 square feet of space to Mountville's existing facility.

And that gives the company much more agility when it comes to serving its customers, in part by mitigating risk but also by unlocking opportunities, President Darrin Layton told Rubber News during the International Elastomer Conference.

"We have two current mixing lines," he said, "so it's a little bit of risk mitigation because if I lose one of those lines, then we are going to lose a fairly large portion of our business. So the first thing is risk mitigation.

"The second thing is we see an opportunity in the market. The custom mixers, through acquisitions and consolidations, that list is shrinking dramatically. So, the fact that we invested $22 million into our new mixing line—and based on our culture—we think that we have pretty good opportunity to grow our business."

To help ensure that growth, Mountville turned to HF Mixing Group.

"We decided to go after a very high end (mixing equipment), and HF is that high end," Layton said. "This new line, it is intermesh, it's 300 liters and it is all the latest and greatest."

What the "latest and greatest" technology does is set Mountville up expanding its customer base, while enabling it to better serve customers across a range of end markets.

"With the intermesh technology, I can go after a lot of markets that I couldn't before," Layton said. "I have had customers come to me and say, 'hey we're an automotive customer, what is your mixing technology?' And as soon as I said, 'we're tangential,' they'd say 'that is not going to cut it for us because our dispersion requirements are so much higher.'

"With this technology, I (can) talk to and land some of that business."

With the expansion underway, Mountville is also reintroducing itself to the industry through a rebranding campaign that refreshes its logo and website.

"We have had the same logo forever in the business," Layton said. "So the reputation was, 'oh that's Mountville. They're a matting company.'"

But Mountville, Layton said, is so much more. Especially when it comes to the custom mixing side of the business.

"We wanted to rebrand, kind of refresh that whole outlook, so we developed a LinkedIn page and much better-looking logo to help say, 'no we're a custom mixer.'"

And an important custom mixer at that—a company that serves smaller industry players.

"I think a lot of customers, especially smaller customers, are looking for an alternative to the bigger mixing companies," Layton said. "I think we are certainly going to be very competitive in price, and I think we can cater to that smaller customer, more so than the larger mixing companies."