Company Briefs – March 2006
• Custom® Building Products opens a new, 112,000 ft² state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Las Vegas to serve the Arizona, Nevada and Utah markets. It’s the 11th U.S. manufacturing facility for the Seal Beach, Calif.-based installation-materials company. Shipping operations began last November, and manufacturing will commence next month.
• Eos Solid Surface opens a new 10,000 ft² warehouse in Portsmouth, Virginia. The new facility now serves Eos customers nationwide with less-than-container orders; however as additional warehouses open later this year, its service area will be confined to the Eastern Seaboard.
• Abrasive Technology acquires Carbotech of Ganges, France. Carbotech’s fiber-reinforced composite dental products will broaden Abrasive’s medical/dental product offering. The Lewis Center, Ohio-based company offers a broad range of products for industrial use, including tooling for the stone industry.
• MultiCam of Northern California announces the opening this month of its new technology facility in Sacramento, Calif. The new facility will provide room for four demonstration machines, as well as additional floor space for an education and training facility. Monthly seminars and training sessions will be available for all those interested in the technology. The company now has more than 120 machines from its line of CNC routers, plasma, waterjet, and laser machines in place in its territory.
• Universal Granite & Marble Inc. (UGM) opens a new 65,000 ft² stone gallery in St. Louis in February after two years of market research and planning. The facility includes cutting-edge technology for material display and product movement for slab viewing; it’s the fifth stone gallery for the Naperville, Ill., company, with others in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee. UGM posted more than $40 million in sales revenue in 2005.
• Decorative Solid Surfaces of Amherst, N.Y, is the new exclusive distributor for Verona Marble Co.’s Legacy quartz surfaces and Portofino marble surfaces for the New England, upstate New York and western Pennsylvania market area. Jody Hinkle, Verona Marble’s vice president of sales, says that the company will able to cover the Northeast United States with a distributor whose focus is on the surfacing market and who has an established customer base.
• F. Barkow Inc. of Milwaukee is the newest distributor for stone-handling equipment from Groves Inc. of McHenry, Ill.
• Task Lighting Corp. won a Platinum Award for Design Excellence from the Awards for Design Excellence (ADEX) program for its Angle Power Strip. The low-profile receptacle unit, in brushed nickel or bronze finishes, is designed to fit under countertops as an alternative to putting receptacles in a backsplash.
• Nuheat Industries Ltd. is named as one of Canada’s 50 Best Managed Companies for 2005. The program, sponsored by Deloitte, CIBC Commercial Banking, National Post and Queen’s School of Business, recognizes excellence in Canadian owned and managed companies; Nuheat, a marketer and manufacturer of electric radiant-floor-warming systems, is based in Delta, British Columbia,
• Hard Rock Tool relocates to a larger facility at 960 E. Discovery Lane in Anaheim, Calif. The company’s CDC warehouse, accounting, purchasing, IT, marketing and upper management all moved and can be reached via the new corporate phone number of 714-422-1212. The company has eight locations nationwide with more than 30 mobile warehouses.