My name is John Butler. I’m the general manager for Northwestern Industries in Yuma, Arizona. We are a safety insulated glass manufacturer. Right now, the facility is 125,000 square foot. We’re going to add another 25,000 to the east side of the building and another 25,000 to the west side.
We have no stock product. Everything here is custom ordered and custom built. And what we do is bring in the raw sheets of low-e glass. Custom cut, temper, laminate, insulate to the customer specifications.
We looked at a number of vendors for a laminating machine. We do our due diligence whenever we purchase equipment. The deciding factor I went with the HHH laminating line is because they supplied everything: the installation, the clave, the water tower and of course the laminated line itself, and they offered as a package deal.
The installation process with HHH went smoothly. The number of team members that HHH had here varied depending on how much equipment was coming in, but anywhere from two to eight of their employees were here at almost all the time.
The HHH workers helped us put in other equipment in our plant that wasn’t theirs. Everything went smooth and the machines started right up with no problems.
The laminated line has now been functioning for about eight months. We were starting at a very slow pace of 50 units here, 50 units there, and then we increased it slowly over the months to right now we’re running 400 or 500 units a week and we continue to increase.
The future with HHH actually looks good. I know we just purchased one of their oversized furnaces at GlassWerks and I know we’re looking at another furnace in this plant.
What excites me about the future of Northwestern Industries is our sales are increasing, we’re finding more markets and what’s more exciting than being with a growing company?
