Web Industries looks towards 2nd European plant
Mark Pihl, president and COO, Web Industries.
With 14-percent sales growth last year, Marlborough-based Web Industries has invested heavily in equipment and facilities. The company opened its new Lateral Flow Diagnostics Center of Excellence in Holliston last year, and sales at the facility since then have met expectations.
President and COO Mark Pihl spoke about investments, workforce development, and growing the company’s European presence.
You moved into your new Holliston facility last year around this time. How has that move benefited Web Industries?
One year ago, we had the grand opening of our Lateral Flow Diagnostics Center of Excellence at our Holliston facility. The response from customers and the industry has been overwhelmingly positive. Leading medical device companies rely on Web to be their preferred contract manufacturer (CMO) for a range of medical products. The sales results in the first year have met our expectations, and we are continuing to build a solid pipeline of opportunities. Clearly, the market response affirms our decision to make this significant investment in facilities and people.
Last year when Kevin Young took over as VP of corporate development, the company said its core markets were well-positioned for growth. Have you seen that growth start to come into fruition yet?
We absolutely have. This past year we recorded record growth. We have seen a year-over-year increase in sales of 14 percent from previous investments that are coming to fruition. As such, we continue to make significant investments in many of our business units. For example, we recently announced a major capital investment of more than $8 million in our Fort Wayne, Ind. facility. We invested in two multi-color printers, a state-of-the-art large format spooler (LFS), and a 50,000-square-foot addition to our existing building to support our health and hygiene customers.
In Atlanta, we have made significant investments this year not only in capital equipment to support our Advanced Composites business, but we are investing heavily in the development of new technologies to support our aerospace customers.
Our investments in emerging technologies are critical to sustaining our growth. Recently we announced the opening of our Thermoplastic Development Center, featuring many of our newest technologies. This allows customers to work alongside us in designing and developing materials for their newest products. Finally, we just announced the opening of our third location for our Cad Cut business.
To support all of this growth and investment, we moved our corporate offices just down the road in Marlborough. We simply outgrew our space with the talent we have had to hire. We now have twice the space as before to accommodate the growth we see in the future.
What are your plans for the next year?
During this past year, we have invested considerable time and resources in evaluating opportunities for Web’s Advanced Composites capabilities in Europe. Our research along with customer visits and meetings with numerous European government ministries for economic development confirm the opportunity for Web’s Advanced Composites business in Europe. It is our expectation we will open a second plant in Europe during 2018.
Anything else you would like to add?
The workplace of the 21st century has changed to be more collaborative, engaged and fast paced. And, for our new market growth strategies to be successful, it will require Web Industries to lead in our selected market segments. This ambitious goal is certainly not a given. Becoming a market-leading company, across all our vertical markets, will be earned by our employees' ability to engage, elevate and excel in an ever-changing global game board. And, for Web to grow and thrive, all of us must be willing to learn new skills and contribute to the business and add value for our customers. It is a strategic mandate and a key responsibility we share as employee owners. As you can see from our results, our employees have embraced this challenge.
To better support employee development that follows the natural cycle of work, we are introducing Web Career Pathways as a career development process to create a more effective way to provide feedback and coaching that will help employee owners reach their potential. Web Career Pathways is a new career development experience that will facilitate more frequent and meaningful conversations between employees, managers and peers. With more frequent touch points through a variety of conversation opportunities, employees gain clarity about future growth opportunities, while understanding the current expectations about performance. These conversations are short, structured touch points to create alignment around current performance, development progress, future expectations and professional growth areas. We are confident a cadence of regular conversations and feedback will bring out our employees best and support the strategic talent development goals for Web Industries.
This interview was conducted and edited for length and clarity by Laura Finaldi, WBJ staff writer.
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