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An global roofing organization gave customers and some nearby leaders tours of its new “flagship” facility close to Hagerstown Thursday then cut a ribbon to mark its opening.
“It is really 1st of its type for our organization,” Derek Cost, manager of corporate communications for IKO, explained of the facility.
“We manufacture different types of flat roofing products in Canada. But this one’s genuinely exciting mainly because it really is our entry into the U.S. professional industry. And this plant will have the capability, when it is really entirely operational, to service the Jap Seaboard and probably beyond.”
IKO helps make roofing, waterproofing and insulation produces for household and business takes advantage of. The corporation was set up in 1951 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and has been family-owned for four generations. It operates more than 35 crops and employs about 4,000 persons throughout North The usa and Europe.
IKO invested some $70 million to grow and completely transform a former RadioShack warehouse off Western Maryland Parkway into its latest production and warehousing facility. About 40 persons now get the job done at plant which has a formal handle of 160 IKO way.
‘First of its kind for IKO’
“It is definitely pivotal for IKO, because it is really the get started of our expansion in the U.S. market,” stated Guy Tremblay, the company’s vice president of North American operations.
IKO can make singles, like the roofing materials generally uncovered on residences and other household houses.
It also will make roofing for flat-roofed business properties, this sort of as shops, warehouses and other amenities. Those roofs are typically engineered systems that use an insulation board with a best ply to deliver weatherproofing, Tremblay mentioned.
“This plant is making the insulation board and the top rated ply, which is a polymeric membrane, which is new for us. It can be the to start with of its kind for IKO,” he said
That single-ply membrane is thermoplastic polyolefin, known as TPO.
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The Hagerstown facility delivers in uncooked materials that are stored in silos and pumped to large machines that flip all those into rolls of TPO roofing. The thickness can be adjusted dependent on the application.
The plant also would make the insulation panels, which can be slice to different lengths and manufactured to various thicknesses.
The products are moved from the producing spot to a warehousing section of the identical making, exactly where they are stored just before staying delivered.
The plant has been earning those merchandise for the past several months, but the business formally celebrated its opening Thursday.
‘Our flagship’
CEO David Koschitzky thanked IKO staff members, clients and nearby business enterprise and federal government leaders for their enable in bringing the project to fruition.
He explained that, in about a few weeks, the business will be at one more celebration to mark the renovation of its facility in Brampton, Ontario, Canada.
“I want to say that to the persons from Hagerstown, simply because that is not genuinely a grand opening. Which is a reopening,” he reported.
“We constructed that primary plant 60 years back. We’ve been extremely blessed to be component of that local community. (We) come to feel like we live there. And it is really our hope and our intent that we will have the exact long-expression knowledge in this article in Hagerstown. We thank you for welcoming us in the way that you have.”
IKO is a long-time supplier to the household roofing marketplace in the United States, the company has described. IKO opened its 1st U.S. asphalt shingle crops in Delaware, Illinois and Ohio in 1981.
“We have produced a really massive imprint in the household company,” Koschitzky claimed. “And with this, our flagship here we hope to start undertaking the similar matter in the business company in North The united states.”
Mike Lewis covers small business, the economy and other concerns. Abide by Mike on Twitter: @MiLewis.