American Nitrile secures $105 million for gloves facility in Ohio

GROVE CITY, Ohio—In line with its motto, American Nitrile L.L.C. is "bringing manufacturing back home" with the development of a 527,000-sq.-ft. nitrile gloves facility in Ohio.

The young disposable glove manufacturer is partnering with Orion Infrastructure Capital, a Houston-based private equity firm, to complete the development of its Ohio manufacturing facility.

Under the arrangement, according to American Nitrile, OIC will provide $105 million in debt financing to support 12 production lines with an aggregate capacity of 3.6 billion gloves per year at the facility, to be located in Grove City.

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CEO Jacob Block founded American Nitrile in 2021 "to overcome personal protective equipment shortages in the United States, specifically nitrile gloves, during the pandemic."

"It's critical for our country to have domestic capabilities for critical supply chain products, nitrile gloves being one of them," Block said. "We're the largest user by far in the world for nitrile gloves, yet we don't produce even a percent of what we consume here."

Block said he plans to create 400 jobs with the facility. At full capacity, the plant will produce 40,000 gloves per line per hour, he said.

Block said the company also raised an additional $35 million in equity from local investors, including Crawford Hoying, a Dublin, Ohio-based real estate developer.

The company also will keep sustainability at its core by having water reclamation and a recycling process on-site, coupled with the reduction of emissions from trans-Pacific shipping compared to its Asia-based competitors.

American Nitrile will recycle about 150 million gallons of water annually, or 50 percent of the wastewater generated in the manufacturing process, according to the company.

"We believe that American manufacturing deserves a comeback," Block said in a March 9 statement. "Orion's investment is a nod of confidence in the long-term viability and growth of our business that will allow us to manufacture an increasingly in-demand product here in America's heartland—and we're going to be able to do it sustainably and competitively."

Ethan Shoemaker, investment partner and head of infra credit at OIC, said the partnership helps the company's goal "to champion sustainable infrastructure through strategic investment partnerships."

Over 95 percent of global nitrile gloves are produced in Malaysia, China, Indonesia and Thailand because of low cost and labor, the equity firm said, claiming forced often contributes to the low costs.

In October, the U.S. banned entry of Supermax gloves over alleged forced labor violations. In September, Top Glove was allowed to resume exporting and selling gloves to the U.S. after gloves were seized at the border in March 2021 for the same reason.

"Commercial and government customers are also increasingly focused on reshoring domestic PPE supply chains following major disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic," it added, "resulting in unprecedented demand for U.S.-based supply.

"(American Nitrile) will establish a stable supply of competitively priced, domestically produced PPE that employs the most efficient manufacturing processes available," Shoemaker said.