Smith Metal Products breaks ground on new manufacturing facility
January 23, 2012
Smith Metal Products, the metal and ceramic injection moulding division of Plastic Products Company, Inc., broke ground recently in Center City, Minnesota, USA, for a new state of the art 60,000 ft2 manufacturing facility. Smith supplies a wide variety of industries and applications including long term implant devices, surgical devices, electronics, military, aerospace, firearms and everyday consumer products.
Smith currently supplies customers around the globe from their manufacturing facility in Lindstrom, Minnesota. In addition, the company maintains a Sales and Engineering office on the West Coast. The new facility will relocate the company three miles from their current location to a new industrial park. The new site will allow for future expansion.
Lori Bjork, General Manager of Smith remarked that the new facility is needed to meet future growth targets and support our customer base, “We are fortunate to be one of the manufacturing companies in the US who has continued to grow in this challenging economy.” Bjork attributed their success to the company’s dedication to provide customers with value and solutions oriented product manufacturing. “American manufacturers cannot ignore foreign competition. We have to do what we have always done best; lead as the world’s innovators creating value for the customer by offering advanced engineering solutions to complex problems.”
Mike Brown, Director of Sales & Marketing remarked, “One of our company’s guiding principles is to be as socially and environmentally conscious as possible. Producing products near point of use not only decreases the environmental footprint, it creates opportunities for highly skilled jobs here in the US. To maintain our competitiveness we rely heavily on automated systems rather than low skilled manual labour. We consider it one of our greatest achievements when we can work with a customer to discontinue manufacturing components overseas. By leveraging our talented and innovative engineering specialists, we have been able to either prevent projects from going overseas or return projects to the US. We don’t just look at a project from the component level. We look for novel ways to reduce costs beginning with raw materials through to the end consumer.”
Brown continued, “Having similar minded partners like BASF Corporation, who supplies the majority of Smith’s raw materials, is essential to the overall success of our projects. BASF is a trusted partner providing high quality materials and technical support, complementing Smith’s proven moulding expertise.
