Metal Coaters is a division of NCI Group, a business segment of Texas-based NCI Building Systems, which is one of the nation’s largest designers, manufacturers and vendors of metal coatings, components and buildings for nonresidential construction in North America.
Metal Coaters’ new plant at 2400 Yankee Road applies paint to steel and aluminum coils for NCI component and metal building product plants that make roofing, siding and other building materials.
Capacity at the coil coating facility is 200,000 tons per year, Kuzdal said.
NCI purchased the 170,000-square-foot facility previously operated by Material Sciences Corp. for $4.9 million in June 2010, but held off on developing the site for 18 months, Kuzdal said.
“(That was done) simply to allow the economy to flow through its cycle and get to the point where there was a little bit of tailwind and the industry was starting to recover,” he said.
The company announced last February that its investment in the former metal coating plant totaled $15 million.
A restoration of the site started in late 2011 and lasted for 14 months. The “substantially revamped and modernized” state-of-the-art facility opened to external customers late last week, Kuzdal said.
Operations launched earlier this month, with Metal Coaters running enough trial material and product for sister companies to qualify that it could start the process of taking external and internal customer orders, he said.
The new facility improves the overall logistics of NCI’s manufacturing operations, Kuzdal said.
“The other divisions of our company have facilities in the northern United States and we currently supply them from our coating lines that are all in the South,” he said. “Jackson, Mississippi and Atlanta, Georgia, in particular. Having a facility in the Ohio region allows us to significantly reduce the freight and logistics required to get product to our sister company facilities.”
NCI was approved for $197,675 in Ohio tax credits to reopen the 170,000-square-foot plant, according to Katie Sabatino, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Development.
The 50-percent tax incentive stretched from 2011 to 2016 and would only be paid out in its entirety if the company creates 74 jobs for the $13 million project, Sabatino said
Having NCI come to the region fills a void Material Sciences left when it closed its plant in 2004 and terminated 87 jobs, said Middletown Vice Mayor Dan Picard.
“It’s a great thing for Middletown that someone has come in and is bringing back jobs that were lost,” Picard said. “The commitment and the investment in Middletown is a show of a fact that they believe that Middletown’s a good place to be, a good place to work and a good place to have a business. I think it’s another vote of confidence in our city.”
The plant started off with nearly 60 workers and will boost staffing to 70 people by late next month, after screening and orientation can be completed.
Staffing isn’t expected to grow in the next year but has the potential to do so in the long-term by as much as an additional 30 percent or about 20 to 25 jobs, Kuzdal said.
“We would need to get the plant up to a higher utilization rate to get there,” he said.
NCI Group also has two other business divisions, one produces metal building components and the other manufactures pre-engineered metal buildings.
“We operate, in part, to service those two businesses,” Kuzdal said.
Founded in 1984, NCI has $1.15 billion in annual revenue, according to the company’s most recent investor presentation.
Including the Yankee Road facility, the coil coating segment now operates four strategically located light-gauge, coil coating facilities and brings the total number of NCI manufacturing facilities in the United States and Mexico to 38, with additional sales and distribution offices in Canada.
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