Hills, Inc. has started manufacturing new project equipment in Hills’ new manufacturing facilities located adjacent to their existing facilities in West Melbourne, FL. The new manufacturing facilities house its machine shop, mechanical and electrical fabrication and assembly, shipping and receiving, and parts inventory. These facilities have a free span floor area of 26,250 square feet (2,439 square meters) and a maximum elevation of 36 feet (11 meters), more than doubling Hills’ former manufacturing space. This additional space will allow Hills to sell and build larger fiber extrusion machines as well as to greatly improve its manufacturing efficiency due to the facility size and the specifically designed layout for building the type of fiber extrusion equipment manufactured and sold by Hills.

In the near future, Hills will also move its Fibers Laboratory into much of the building space formerly housing its equipment manufacturing. This will about triple the Hills Fiber Laboratory space, allowing Hills to install additional equipment such as hydroentangling and through-air-bonding to its existing spunbond, meltblown, and continuous filament laboratory equipment. The Hills Lab is used around the clock by Hills and its global customers to develop new raw materials, and fiber and fabric processes and products. The balance of the older manufacturing space will be used by Hills to expand its very unique facilities for the manufacture of extremely high precision polymer metering and distribution equipment used in its multi-component fiber extrusion equipment.