NewAge Industries expands production plant in US

Published: 13-Feb-2017

The plastic tubing producer is making room at its Southampton (Pa) plant for new cleanroom manufacturing suites, product inspection areas and warehousing

Preparations at NewAge Industries are underway to expand and renovate 40,000 ft2 of space for more cleanroom suites, inspection areas and warehousing.

The company is using an existing area at its headquarters and manufacturing facility located just north of Philadelphia. Completion of the renovations is anticipated to be within the next few months.

The need to expand arose primarily from the success of NewAge’s AdvantaPure product line. AdvantaPure’s tubing, hose and moulded components are manufactured for high purity, single-use biopharm and pharmaceutical applications such as vaccine production and cell culture media transfer for harvest, filtration, fermentation, sampling and storage.

“AdvantaPure has come a long way in a relatively short time period,” said Ken Baker, CEO, of the division, which was started in 2002. “Our expertise in tubing, hose and fluid transfer solutions positioned us to advise our customers on how to meet their unique challenges in this highly technical market, and now we’re expanding to meet this demand and prepare for the future.”

NewAge will invest US$9.5m into the project. The area within NewAge’s building was previously rented to other businesses for several years – it even housed the local fire department, free of charge, while the firehouse was undergoing renovation – and more recently had been used for NewAge’s inventory overflow.

The space will consist of 20,000ft2 of ISO Class 7 cleanrooms and an equal amount of area for warehousing.

The project’s next stages involve cleanroom engineering, design and construction by AES Clean Technology Inc. of Montgomeryville, Pa.

“Knowing the quality centric culture at NewAge Industries, we at AES were honored to be selected by NewAge for the design and construction of their new cleanroom facility,” said Ralph Melfi, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at AES.

“During the Basis of Design Phase of the project, NewAge called on their entire team, from Manufacturing to Quality Control and Engineering to Facilities, to participate in the project planning. Process flows, materials of construction and mechanical systems were all challenged and vetted out to be sure that this would be a world class, ISO rated facility designed to deliver the highest quality products to their customers.”

NewAge expects to be able to move equipment from its existing clean room manufacturing areas to the newly renovated space during the second quarter of 2017.

Baker noted that because the company has multiple tubing extruders and presses for molded components, the move-in will occur in phases, with one piece of equipment being shutdown, moved, validated and restarted at a time. There will be no production stoppages or shortage of products due to the plant expansion.

 

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