CertainTeed unveils $240M expansion of Palatka plant, creating 110 new manufacturing jobs (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Dubbed the Beast of the East, building products manufacturer CertainTeed unveiled its massive expansion of its Palatka facility on Friday.
Leaders from Saint-Gobain, the parent company of CertainTeed, said the $240 million expansion made the plant the largest of its kind in the world.
The project at the CertainTeed gypsum wallboard facility is expected to create 110 new manufacturing jobs.
At full capacity, around 300 people should be working at the plant, which produces wallboards, fire-resistant sheathing and shaft lines.
CertainTeed aims to capitalize on the construction boom in Florida and the Southeast, boosting its capacity to ship millions of wallboards using a variety of logistical assets.
A rail spur connecting to the CSX network allows for shipping on a massive scale.
As the Southeast is the primary distribution zone for the facility, the site’s rail connection can bring finished products as far as the Midwest and even Texas, said Saint-Gobain North America CEO Mark Rayfield.
“With rail, you can get a lot further,” Rayfield said. The CEO sees the site as a crucial manufacturer to provide materials for much-needed affordable housing and to fuel commercial real estate growth.
Meanwhile Jacksonville offers a key entryway for imported materials at Jaxport.
But the raw material supply chain for CertainTeed’s Northeast Florida operation stretches beyond the port.
From quarries to power plants, the gypsum in the CertainTeed wallboards comes from an unexpected mash of sources.
CertainTeed finds its gypsum from burned coal at the Seminole Generating Station on top of the gypsum extracted from rocks mined overseas, said Jay Bachman, president of the Interior Products Group of Saint-Gobain North America.
“It’s gypsum that’s made through power plants. It’s a byproduct of coal-fired power plants that we bring in, which is a recycled material, and then we also bring it in through the port, which is natural gypsum that can be mined,” Bachman said. “So we actually bring it today from Spain, but we also have the ability of other locations to bring it into the port.”
Workers at the Palatka plant combine the gypsum produced from both those sources with paper to produce crucial building materials.
As the process of manufacturing the wallboards entails complex chemical processes and sophisticated technology, a significant amount of manual labor is still needed to craft the products.
Debbie Master, plant manager of the CertainTeed Palatka facility, said the company is never looking to lose people through its upgrades.
“The process of making wallboard still is pretty much a handmade product, so there’s a lot of operator interface between the production of the wallboard and the machinery that’s producing it,” Master said. “So the beauty of the technology is that it increases the skill sets of our employees, not necessarily removes their jobs.”
CertainTeed is continuing to make investments in Northeast Florida. A Superfund site in Jacksonville is undergoing an environmental cleanup, and will eventually be sold to CertainTeed Gypsum Operating Co. LLC for development.
That project is receiving the support of $3.4 million in city incentives, and CertainTeed plans a $69.3 million investment to develop a cross-dock terminal operation for importing various raw materials, according to city documents.
Photo courtesy of CertainTeed