Hose manufacturer Norres launches plant ugrades

Gelsenkirchen, Germany — Norres Schlauchtechnik GmbH has launched a programme to invest a little more than $3 million (€2.8 million) to double its capacity and upgrade at least one factory.

A manufacturer of industrial hose, hose systems and other products, the company has seven sites spread around the globe, three of which are production plants. One of the factories is located in La Porte, Ind., and manufactures cable protection conduits and tube diffuser aeration systems, used for wastewater treatment.

Norres did not say where the upgrades were taking place or if its US plant was involved. A company spokeswoman said some additional information about the investment project likely will be made available at a future date but not at this time.

The project will take about two years to complete, according to the Gelsenkirchen-headquartered firm.

Its investment will be in new modern production systems, and technology that will be faster, the spokeswoman said in an email. That will enable more processes to be optimized so that lower cost manufacturing is possible in the future, the company said.

Additional production lines also will be available to handle customer-specific jobs, it said. Overall, the upgrades will give it more flexibility, the firm said.

Norres' improvement programme not only will boost capacity, it also will result in faster delivery times and trim manufacturing costs, the spokeswoman said. Those advantages will be passed on to the firm's customers, she added.

“We want to grow with our customers on a targeted basis,” managing director Burkhard Mollen said in a prepared statement. “Our planned investments and the innovations and services from recent months will provide our customers the necessary tools for this.”

He said it is important that the company's customers “continuously work together with us on a successful basis. We can only achieve fundamental advantages together.”

Norres, which was founded in 1889, has been positioning itself for growth during the last few years. In early 2014, it spent about $1.87 million to purchase, renovate and equip a 30,000-sq.-ft. plant on 3.67 acres in La Porte.

It selected the city because of the “decisive advantages of the location, especially its central geographical position that will make it an optimal transportation hub,” Mollen said at the time.

Operating as a subsidiary of Norres Schlauchtechnik and called Norres North America Inc., the company opened the facility last spring.

Norres also opened a facility in China in 2012.