Fluoropolymer Resources LLC (FRL) announced that the company has opened its new 63,000-sq-ft production facility in North Windham, Connecticut.

A press release said that the company’s state-of-the-art facility brings all of its existing assets under one roof, while also adding new capacity and capabilities to further expand their position as a leading global reprocessor of fluoropolymer products.

"FRL is incredibly excited to have made this move to our new facility at such a dynamic period in our 28 year history," said company CEO Kevin Buchanan. "With this year’s production topping 2.6 million lb of FEP, PFA and ETFE, and 30% growth in volume anticipated in 2019, we needed a larger factory with an open floor plan to expand and streamline our production for greater control of quality and yields."

More space was also required to complete the integration of FRL’s 2018 acquisition of Trifluor Kunststoff, the release said. It noted that the German fluoropolymer reprocessor is a world leader in supplying reprocessed PFA and FEP with clarity and properties equal to prime virgin polymer. That resource added substantially to FRL’s long-term commitment to upgrade the usefulness and value of even the most contaminated PFA and FEP scrap supplies.

FRL, a division of Prime Materials Recovery, is a leading recycler of FEP, PFA and ETFE fluoropolymer plastics in North America, with products sold across the globe.

Wire and cable manufacturer Lake Cable plans to invest $7 million to expand its Valparaiso plant.

Per a report in the Times of Northwest Indiana, Lake Cable, a privately held wire and cable manufacturing that employs 450 workers at five plants, including three in Indiana, plans to add 82,000 sq ft to its 126,000-sq-ft plant in Valparaiso. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2020.

"Fourteen years after expanding into Valparaiso, we are excited and optimistic about the way our business is growing and developing," Lake Cable President Emile Tohme said in the report. The business was founded by Bill Runzel IV in the 1990s on the west side of Chicago with just three wire-making machines and a total of four people.

Today, Lake Cable manufactures a variety of cables for the utility, renewable energy, commercial construction, petrochemical, transit, HVAC, fire alarm, building management system, steel, and industrial sectors. Once the expansion is done, plans call for up to 54 new workers to be hired.

Taiwan-based Admiral Cable announced plans to extend its manufacturing operations to New Mexico, where it will investing $50 million to build a 65,000-sq-ft facility in Santa Teresa as the first phase of expansion.

Per multiple published reports citing the office of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, the project will not be completed until early 2020, at which time the facility will be 175,000 sq ft. The company, which makes assembled electrical cords and power supplies and other industrial cables and wires, expects to hire 342 employees.

The governor said in the statement that she was able to connect with Admiral Cable last summer on a trip to Taiwan and the relationship developed from there. The state will provide up to $3.92 million in Local Economic Development Act funding for the expansion.

“Admiral Cable is excited to on-shore domestic manufacturing capacity in New Mexico,” T. C. Huang, chairman and CEO of I-sheng Electric Wire & Cable, a majority shareholder of Admiral Cable, said in a statement. “Santa Teresa affords us greater proximity to our customers with efficient market access, supply chain efficiencies and high-quality labor.”

Huang said that the state was an attractive place for the expansion. New Mexico’s strong business climate for manufacturers makes for a very compelling value proposition. “With a competitive total cost of operations, we can compete with foreign-made product right here from Santa Teresa. We thank Governor Martinez and her entire team for their professionalism and support through our site selection process.”

China’s Hengtong recently commemorated a significant subsea power cable accomplishment that it reported represents an industry milestone.

A press release said that on Nov. 26, 2018, the "Hengtong Overseas 10,000 km Submarine Optical Cable Delivery Ceremony" was held in Changshu, Jiangsu Province. The event celebrated Hengtong’s manufacturing and delivering nearly 3,000 km of submarine optical cable. The cable was supplied for use in Chile’s Fibre Optic Austral (FOA) subsea cable system, which will run along the coast of Chile, connecting Puerto Montt with Puerto Williams, with two branches to Tortel and Punta Arenas. With that production, the company achieved accumulative overseas deliveries of 10,000 km of submarine optical cables.

"This ranks Hengtong first in the world in both capacity and delivery to the domestic submarine optical cable market," the release said. "This is a milestone in China’s submarine cable industry and highlights the ‘made in China’ drive in the field of international oceanic communications."

During the event, Qian Jianlin, executive president of Hengtong Group, said that Hengtong was committed to creating a submarine industry supply chain of integrating product, engineering and operation service to promote the implementation of the "One Belt and One Road" initiative and contribute to global connections.

In the past five years, Hengtong has built a global-leading submarine optical cable R&D production base, includ-ing a system integration, testing center and a dock cabling system, making Hengtong one of the leading submarine optical cable companies, both at home and abroad, the release said. It added that the company has also introduced a number of new products, including two-stage composite cables for application in marine disaster prevention pre-warning networks.

Hengtong notes that it now has 10 manufacturing facilities based in China, Europe, South America, South Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, with sales offices in more than 30 countries and regions that supply products and service to over 140 countries.