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Area Development - Site Selection, Facility Planning and Workforce Development

Kinedyne Expands Prattville, Alabama, Operations & Manufacturing Center

01/12/2017
Kinedyne, a world-leading manufacturer and distributor of cargo control products for the transportation industry, is close to completing a major relocation and expansion at its operations center, 12.5 miles northwest of Montgomery, in Prattville, Alabama.

The expanded 200,000-square-foot facility will now house a wide range of employees specializing in engineering, manufacturing, quality control, supply chain management, customer service and government contracts. Company officials said the move came as a result of a strategic plan initiated by the company’s leadership, aimed at achieving gains in overall speed, efficiency, productivity and improvements resulting from a unified corporate culture.

“Ours is an extremely competitive marketplace,” Steve Atzeni, vice president of North American Operations for Kinedyne LLC, said. “This consolidation of talent and resources will help Kinedyne stay as competitive in the next 50 years as it has been for the last 50.”

Dan Schlotterbeck, President of Kinedyne LLC, said; “A robust business climate combined with exemplary state, county and municipal support made our choice to invest in this location the right one for our business to benefit and add value in the long term for our customers.”

The Prattville manufacturing operation includes equipment dedicated to the weaving of webbing, finishing and sewing, creating everything from cargo nets, to tow straps, to helicopter slings and Kinedyne’s renowned load securement straps. The facility also has a test lab with extensive capabilities, including those assessing webbing load capacity and breaking strength.

The Alabama plant is also responsible for the manufacturing of Kinedyne’s Kaptive Beam Decking System. Kinedyne’s Kaptive Beam Decking System enables users to increase asset utility by increasing a trailer’s load density by up to 50 percent.

Kaptive Beam manufacturing operations include aluminum beam extrusions and the machining and fabrication of the Kaptive Beam’s unique head assembly made from zinc-plated steel and anodized high-strength aluminum. The head assembly also includes a heavy-duty, spring-loaded trigger mechanism that automatically locks the beam into its track slots.

Previous to the move, the company’s engineering and quality control functions primarily resided at its Branchburg, New Jersey and Lawrence, Kansas locations, while manufacturing, quality control, supply chain management, customer service and government contract staff were spread across locations in Kansas, Nevada and Alabama.

“Our previous geographic separation made higher levels of collaboration, teamwork and productivity more challenging,” Atzeni said. “There is something to be said for being able to sit around a table and communicate with your colleagues face to face in the same room.”

The company maintains offices in all previous locations, with the exception of Kansas, and some staff took advantage of relocation options. Even with the closing of the Kansas facility, Kinedyne said it expects the net increase in jobs to total about 40 new positions in Prattville, resulting from the growth of business opportunities nationwide.

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