Customers visiting the facility will have access to Shawmut’s world-class design, engineering, technical, and programme management staff, all under one roof.
The Park Avenue Technical Centre renovations augment Shawmut’s existing 180,000 square foot facility with a new multi-story programme and technical development centre with state-of-the-art customer meeting and collaboration capabilities. The overall facility, which includes office, lab, manufacturing, and warehouse space for the location’s 145 employees, features a newly constructed office and customer experience wing; a rapid colour formulation centre; technical, quality, and colour labs; and investments in on-site customer collaboration and accelerated product development processes.
“The southeast is a hub for the US textile industry, and the updates we have made to our Park Avenue Technical Centre, in the heart of this region, will allow us to further our commitment to helping customers solve pressing business challenges rapidly through advanced materials innovation,” said James Wyner, CEO of Shawmut Corporation. “Innovation is at the heart of everything we do at Shawmut and providing our employees with new customer experience spaces will only foster greater thinking and ingenuity for our world-class team of engineers, designers, and marketers to continue creating better materials solutions for our customers.”
The technical centre supports several of Shawmut’s core markets, including military and protective, health and safety, and custom solutions. However, the main output at the facility is automotive-related advanced materials. Shawmut is the majority supplier of laminated automotive headliner materials in North America. More than 50 per cent of all cars produced for the North American market have headliner materials from this facility. In addition to headliners, the company also makes laminated materials for automotive pillars, sun visors, sunshades and panoramic roof roller shades, seating, door and trim laminations, package trays, and parcel shelves.
Shawmut’s Park Avenue Technical Centre is the company’s first ISO 14001 certified facility. It is 100 per cent landfill-free, with less than 1 per cent of the waste from the technical centre going to a landfill, and instead repurposed through recycling and other external sustainability operations. Locally, the facility is recognised in the top 1 per cent of businesses for safety and culture activities by the state of North Carolina and is a member of the Carolina Star programme that recognises worksites that are self-sufficient in their ability to control hazards at the worksite.
Additionally, Shawmut has made strides in its water conservation efforts at the Park Avenue technical centre, cutting water usage by nearly 75 per cent over the last several years.
“At Shawmut, we pride ourselves in our ability to quickly adapt to changes in the industries we serve to ensure we are meeting the dynamic needs of our customers,” said Eddie Gant, senior operations director at Shawmut and manager of the Park Avenue technical centre. “Our customers are prioritising improving their sustainability, and we want to support their goals with products that can play a role in a more sustainable future. We are committed to doing our part to reduce CO2 emissions, developing new processes and protocols to consume less energy and water and produce less waste for our company and our customers.”
Fibre2Fashion News Desk (SV)