The crick in Cory McCabe’s neck is starting to wear off after several months of looking up at the new powder coating system being installed in his company’s new facility.
The new 45,000 square-foot powder coating facility will house Prime Powder Coating in Memphis, just down the street from his original facility that once housed Prime Restoration, which will stay in operation.
“Every day for months, I would come in and just stare at all the things going into the new place,” McCabe says. “My neck was getting sore just from watching all the moving parts going in, but it has been a very exciting time.”
The original Prime location is over 17,600 square feet with two powder coating lines that includes a 700-foot production line that could handle roughly 7,200 parts per day.
Adding New Location for Bigger Parts
Cory McCabeThe new location came about when one of McCabe’s customers asked if Prime Powder Coating could coat more work for them, but this was for larger pieces. At the time, the original location was landlocked, and expanding was not in the equation.
The maximum size at the original location is about 90 inches, which McCabe says caused them “to miss a lot of opportunities.” The new location will solve many of the problems he was having.
“It’s always been in the back of my head of either expanding our existing powder coat line to be able to hold at least a 10 to 12-foot part or do what we are doing now, which greatly exceeded that and can go to 25-foot parts,” he says.
4,000 Pounds Per Carrier
The new line will be 4,000 pounds per carrier.The new line will be 4,000 pounds per carrier, which opens Prime Powder Coating up to a slew of new customers.
“There’s really nothing that we can’t put on this production line,” McCabe says. “And I don’t know anybody that’s turning that much around here.”
McCabe got his start in coatings in 2010 with Prime Restoration. The powder coating operation quickly grew from just two employees to 15 in just a few years, and they kept adding staff to meet the demand. In 2016, Prime Restoration — which is now changed its name to Prime Powder Coating as well — added over 8,000 square feet of space to capture the growing market in the Memphis area.
Planning, Planning, and More Planning
In March 2022, McCabe and his wife, Jamie — who runs the administrative offices of both companies — began planning for the expansion. Intellifinishing was brought in to design the new pretreatment, powder coating, and curing system, which brought about the usual changes and adjustments as ideas were finally put to paper.
“We went through 11 revisions, maybe even more,” McCabe says. “But they were great to work with, and we finally got the style and flow that we liked. The flow of the system is very important, and everything needed to be just right.”
Prime Powder Coating broke ground on their new facility in November 2022, and that’s when McCabe says his neck became strained from all the gawking and staring at the ceiling at how a carefully planned project on paper was finally coming to fruition.
He says it was amazing to see flat drawings turn into 3D concepts on the computer and eventually into the real thing.
“We had access to some great designers, people that are great and solid in works cad, and they put this line in the digital world,” McCabe says. “Once we got our revisions done, they took what Intellifinishing provided and put that in a 3D world; we could literally see forklifts, parts, storage bins, all of that and saw where it would go.”
Top Suppliers for New Coating System
The new 45,000 square-foot powder coating facility will house Prime Powder Coating in Memphis.After Intellifinishing did its magic on the finishing line, Prime Powder Coating brought in Midwest Finishing Systems to install the ovens and washers, which McCabe also says was done immaculately and to precision just as it was drawn up.
Prime also installed new Gema powder coating equipment, worked with BASF/Chemetall on the chemistry and set up for the washer systems, and also CCIS.
“We honestly have spared no expense with this new facility,” McCabe says. “It is really a sight to see from the ground up.”
The lines were christened in May, and Prime Powder Coating has already dialed in the system and has been coating parts without any problems for the last month or so.
However, with any new facility comes the question of how to staff it, an issue that McCabe and his management team — which includes his wife and Vice President Jamie McCabe, General Manager Charles Lambert, and Facility Manager William Fransioli — spent some time to see how they could staff the new facility and maintain operations at the existing location.
Automation Increases Production, Repeatability
The solution was to transition some of their existing staff over to the larger facility, and they have been adding staff to bring the workforce at the new location to just over 22 people.
A big plus has been the automation that is installed in the new line, which helps reduce some of the need for extra manpower and results in a more predictable application of the coatings.
“Automation has been huge for us,” McCabe says. “Rather than going continuously 6 feet a minute, you’ve got these carriers that can run 30 feet a minute, or even 40 feet a minute in non-critical zones. Being able to do that pre-staging has been great, as we’ve got racks where we can stage all our load bars, simply hang them up, and keep the line moving.”
McCabe and his team have been busy reaching back out to customers who they had to pass on doing their larger parts and letting them know they are capable of taking on their projects.
And Prime Powder Coating isn’t just stopping with the new addition. McCabe says they are planning to set Phase 2 in motion as early as the first of 2024, if not sooner. That project will include an inline monorail blast system, an additional powder coating booth, and an additional cure oven which will pretty much completely fill up the 45,000 square feet of space.
Phase 2 is Coming Soon
Prime installed new Gema powder coating equipment, uses BASF/Chemetall on the chemistry and washer systems, and also CCIS.And as they continue to grow, McCabe says they are also in discussion of expanding their footprint into other states, too.
“My wife and I run the business together, and we are really excited about this new expansion,” he says. “That’s the mindset that we operate with. Obviously, once we’re up and running here — fully running as many shifts as we can run — Phase 2 is already set up within the line where we would experience no downtown. Tracks are already set up; the slots are ready for the next oven, the next booth, and the only additional construction we have is to add an addition on the outside of the building.”
The biggest reason the McCabes think that further expansion could go well is the team he has helping to run operations, which includes Lambert and Fransioli, just to name a few. He says without the support of everyone that was involved, the company’s vision would have never been possible.
“We’ve been blessed to have some great staff,” he says. “My general manager, Charles, has been in the industry just as long as I have — maybe even longer — and he has turned into a great general manager. Lambert and Fransioli can oversee things, so we’ve put a lot of trust in them to handle it. We have put together a team of dedicated all-stars that we consider family. They work as if this company is their own, and that’s what every company is looking for.”
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