Pexco marks Manufacturing Day with opening of Extrusion and Engineering Center of Excellence

Companies in the plastics processing supply chain are doing their part to celebrate Manufacturing Day. We recently wrote about Proto Labs, an on-demand manufacturer of prototypes and low-volume production parts, which is officially opening its 3D printing hub in Cary, NC, today. Meanwhile, over in the Philadelphia area, Pexco LLC, a specialty plastics developer and manufacturer headquartered in Alpharetta, GA, officially launched its Extrusion and Engineering Center of Excellence (ECOE).

The center offers engineering consultation and design services related to custom-extruded products or components. It is focused on the industrial market, including the lighting, filtration, and traffic safety sectors, as well as customers in other fields, such as medical manufacturing, that require specialized plastic extrusions or custom-engineered parts. Pexco increasingly eyes medical extrusion as a core business area, especially since acquiring Precision Extrusion, a manufacturer of medical tubing and catheter products, in 2015.

Located within an existing 65,000-square-foot facility in Morrisville, PA, the ECOE is home to many of Pexco’s 100 engineering and production specialists and houses 12 extrusion lines, including three that are devoted to product development. In addition, there are collaboration areas and a gallery that displays Pexco’s extrusion capabilities. The ECOE investment follows the 2014 expansion of the Philadelphia operation, when Pexco added approximately 20,000 square feet of manufacturing and development engineering production space to the plant. 

“Too often it is said that ‘we don’t make things anymore’ or ‘manufacturing jobs have all gone overseas,’” noted Pexco CEO Neil Shillingford. “That’s not true, and the Extrusion Center of Excellence is proof. This center exists to support the dynamic industrial plastics market all across North America and American manufacturing, in particular,” he said.

Pexco also announced a multi-year investment in the Bucks County Technical High School in Fairless Hills, PA, in support of its Manufacturing Academy program. The pairing between businesses and education not only facilitates community relations, but also benefits U.S. manufacturing and the development of the next generation of skilled workers necessary to compete in the global economy, said Pexco in a news release. This is a pressing issue: Over the next decade, nearly 3.5 million manufacturing jobs will need to be filled because of baby boomer retirements and U.S. economic expansion, according to the Manufacturing Institute, which estimates that two million of those jobs could go unfilled because of a lack of skilled labor.