Manufacturing has returned to a former Alcoa building in the once-beleaguered business district in New Kensington: Filterbuy is producing residential and commercial air filters for heating and cooling.
Supply-chain issues aren’t slowing this family business, which is headquartered in Talladega, Ala.
“The supply-chain problems nationally do not impact us because everything is sourced and manufactured in the United States,” said Glenna George, human resources manager.
That is by design.
Filterbuy focuses on keeping operations exclusively in the United States.
With help of Gov. Tom Wolf’s office and the state’s Pennsylvania First Program, Filterbuy came to Pennsylvania to lease a 137,000-square-foot production space in the New Kensington Advanced Manufacturing Park. The plant opened in early August.
The New Kensington facility is producing filters that can be shipped directly to customers rather than relying on the company’s other production facilities in Alabama, Florida and Utah. Operations are going well, George said.
Filterbuy opened the facility as part of a strategy to reach customers along the Northeast seaboard. The company’s increased manufacturing has been partially fueled by the need for more air filtration products during the covid-19 pandemic. They are now producing filters to meet hospital-grade standards.
The company plans to invest more than $2 million at the Alle-Kiski Valley site in the next several years and bring hundreds of jobs to the region.
The production lines are operated by employees who assemble the filters by hand with precut cardboard casing and accordion-folded filters. Two workers, on either side of a conveyor belt, assemble each filter.
The company offers 250 standard filter sizes, George said. In addition, it is the only manufacturer in the country that can make an air filter to fit any size and specification, according to company officials.
Eventually, the New Kensington site will have the capacity to produce 30,000 air filtration products daily.
More than 50 workers are on site. The company is in the process of recruiting more people, George said.
“We are continuing to make improvements and expand here,” George said.
By the second quarter of 2022, the company plans to have a workforce at least twice the size, she said.
New Kensington Mayor Tom Guzzo has lauded Filterbuy’s facility for helping to spark redevelopment in the city. An official release from the governor’s office welcomed the company as it “increases its regional presence, creates jobs, and provides high-quality, American- made products to customers across the country.”
People seeking to work at Filterbuy are asked to start by writing to recruiting@ filterbuy.com.