Northern Composites

business, so we’d like to have a location there, and, of course, the west coast, where there’s an enormous marketplace for our materials. And that might be organic growth, or perhaps, more likely, a strategic partnership with other companies who are, perhaps, servicing the aerospace market, but not really heavily involved in composites, but perhaps would like to be; or somebody who’s involved with composites but doesn’t service the aerospace industry. It could work either way. We’ve been talking to some potential partners. The key thing is they have ‘feet on the street’ and perhaps, even more importantly, they have brick and mortar locations where we would like to put product on the shelf. “The second area is expanding our manufacturing and kitting capabilities (Kitting is the gathering of components and parts needed for the manufacture of a particular assembly or product. Individual components are gathered together, as a kit, and issued to the point of use.) We have one CNC cutting table now, where we’re able to cut materials to custom shapes, and we see that as an area that will grow dramatically in the future. It’s a great opportunity for us to value-add, competing with any competitor head on, selling a roll of this or a box of that. When you start to add some value by custom kitting, or helping a customer design a custom product and then fabricating it for them, that’s an opportunity to add some value and some margin.” “So, we’re poised for some pretty explosive growth,” Hewett says, in conclusion. “The last few years, we’ve been involved in launching our own product line and putting all the systems and processes in place. Now, we’re ready to go mainstream and that’s what’s going to happen in the next few years. If the reception in the western part of the U.S., and other areas in the world, is as warm as it’s been on the east coast, we’re going to be very busy.” PREFERRED VENDOR n Precision Fabrics Group, Inc 1-888-PEEL-PLY