Materials and recycling firm Niche Polymer L.L.C. is growing by offering specialty services to its customers.
In late 2022, Columbia, Md.-based Niche opened a plant to do custom size reduction and similar materials work in Florence, Ala. The 100,000-sq.-ft. refurbished site employs 50.
In a phone interview, Niche President Shreyas Naik said the firm chose the Alabama location because it has "a good customer base" with Japanese companies in that area. The plant does size reduction work with base resins and compounds, then returns the materials to customers where they are processed for multiple applications.
With the Alabama plant up and running, Niche now has plans to open a larger site doing similar size reduction work in the Houston area. The proposed site would cover 400,000 square feet and employ 100. Naik said site selection should be done by the end of 2024, with the new plant expected to come online in 2026.
The Alabama plant was Niche's first major expansion since late 2021, when it bought Westchester Plastics and Fluoropolymer Products, two businesses based in Nesquehoning, Pa. Both of those businesses had been owned by industrial conglomerate Ametek Inc. Fluoropolymer Products specializes in heat exchangers, while Westchester Plastics is a toll compounder of engineering resins and other materials.
Naik said those acquisitions gave Niche a presence in toll compounding, but they were "a one-off," since the firm prefers to grow organically by building its own facilities. "That way you can pick your own equipment and everything else," he said.
Niche also recently rebranded all plastics-related companies owned by parent firm SirNaik Group under the Niche name. Naik said using one name will make it easier for the firm's customers to do business with Niche.
Other businesses now under the Niche brand include Polymer Alliance Services, which operates a 400,000-sq.-ft. material processing and storage site in Washington, W.Va., as well as packaging firm Green Sustainable Solutions and recycler Intercontinental Export Import.
In Ravenswood, W.Va., Niche operates a 350,000-sq.-ft. specialty compounding plant that makes compounds based on engineering resins—as well as polypropylene—primarily for the automotive market. That site runs 10 large extrusion lines and employs 80.
Naik said business conditions in 2024 have been "stable," with more interest coming from large customers looking to re-use their own materials to improve their sustainability performance. Outside of automotive, Naik said Niche has seen recent growth in the recreation and lawn and garden end markets.
