REHAU Plant Cullman celebrates 25 years in operation
REHAU announced the 25-year anniversary of establishing its production plant in Cullman, Alabama. The plant began operations in early 1996 with 30 employees producing bumpers for the 1997 sport utility vehicle of Mercedes-Benz U.S. International (MBUSI) made in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The facility has expanded numerous times to its current footprint of about a million square feet with nearly 800 employees and currently operates as two separate plants – one specializing in automotive painted exterior components, the other in PEXa piping for plumbing and radiant heating systems and gaskets for household appliances.
In October 1994, construction began on a 200,000-square-foot facility located in Industrial Park II off Highway 69 that would be equipped with injection molding and painting technology. The plant was still ramping up production of its first vehicle model when, in October 1996, the company broke ground on an expansion that would nearly double its size. While continuing to participate in the growth of automotive production in the southeastern United States, in 2003, Plant Cullman became the first REHAU plant outside of Germany to master the demanding technology for producing crosslinked polyethylene (PEXa) pipe. This lead to the January 2006 announcement of plans to build a second plant for PEXa pipe production to open in May 2007. After weathering the 2008 economic downturn, the company celebrated yet another automotive plant expansion in April 2014 as it announced plans to build a technical center. In 2016, the construction plant ventured into the appliance business with the start-up of its first gasket production line.