More hiring is expected in next few months

Less than three months after revealing its intention to operate a 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Marion, TriEnda is now producing plastic pallets.

Though the operation is not yet completely automated, saleable product is now coming off the first machine at the manufacturing facility at 3301 S. Adams St., said Herschel Scott, the company's vice president for human resources.

Expansion was necessitated by high demand for TriEnda's product — worldwide demand for plastic pallets has spiked in recent years, Scott said.

He estimates there are 70 billion pallets worldwide, 99 percent of which are made of wood. But with the ability to better sanitize, reuse and to imbed RFID inventory scanning technology, Scott said the demand for his company's plastic-based product has exploded.

"It's a high cost going in, but in the long run, (plastic pallet users) can keep a lot of money in the bank," Scott said.

Demand is so far outpacing supply that he said TriEnda is producing pallets at top capacity and can still essentially choose its buyers.

"We're one of the few companies that can say we're performing well with our contracts and the markets we're selling into," Scott said.

The company uses a custom-built thermoformer, which in essence heats plastic sheets, molds the plastic into pallets, welds together the top and bottom pieces, cools the material and trims the resulting product to the desired shape, which in Marion will exclusively be 40-inch-by-48-inch pallets.

Once fully automated, the first thermoformer should be able to produce about 3,800 pallets per day.

The company also plans to build two more production machines at the plant within the next three months, one with equal capacity and another that will produce about half as many pallets.

Dennis Beyak, who joined TriEnda in October to help launch the Marion operation and now will stay with the company as plant manager, said he can foresee significant growth for the facility down the road in the fields of thermoforming and sheet extrusion.

"We're a growing company," he said. "We've doubled in size, and we can double again."

A lot of things are going TriEnda's way, Beyak said, including a niche market, a diversified product base and long-term relationships with good customers.

Now, he said he wants to help TriEnda grow in Marion.

"I've been really impressed with the people of Marion," he said. "They've been very supportive of me and TriEnda."

Marion's TriEnda work force stands at about 30 people. Scott said he hopes to double that number in the next 90 days as the two new production units come on line.

Scott said WorkOne, which assisted TriEnda with its hiring process, fielded between 1,500 and 2,000 applications for positions at the plant.

The quality of the applicants was a major surprise, Scott said.

"I guess we weren't prepared to have such a qualified work force," he said. "It's a situation any manager is glad to walk into — a tremendous number of high-quality workers who need work."

The company, based in Portage, Wis., found Marion after a national search for a site that could accommodate it manufacturing needs. Scott said the marriage has been a great one so far.

"You have the building, you have the (electrical capability), you have the work force — and we didn't even realize what a qualified work force it was," he said.