DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060627

SECTION: BUSINESS                PAGE: D1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   48 lines

SUFFOLK PLANT PLANS EXPANSIONALLIED COLLOIDS EXPECTS TO DOUBLE OUTPUT, CREATE 70 JOBS BY THE SUMMER OF 1999

Allied Colloids Americas announced Wednesday that it plans a $33.5 million expansion of its Suffolk plant, which will create 70 jobs by the summer of 1999.

The expansion will essentially double the Suffolk plant's output, said Stephen Harris, vice president of sales and Allied Colloids' general manager in Suffolk.

In 1996, the British specialty chemicals maker said it would invest $106 million over the next five years in its Suffolk facility. The project announced Wednesday is part of that investment.

Suffolk city officials could not be reached Wednesday for comment on the company's plans.

Allied Colloids' existing facility in Suffolk employs about 500 people and produces flocculant, a polymer substance used to settle solids out of waste water at sewage treatment plants and industrial facilities. The plant is in the Wilroy Industrial Park, just off the Route 58/460 Bypass.

The expansion will produce 44 million pounds a year of powder-grade flocculant, adding to the plant's liquid and solid versions of the product, Harris said.

``This additional capacity will allow us to meet increasing global demand and, in particular, to offer an improved service to our customers in the Americas and the Far East,'' said David Farrar, chief executive of Allied Colloids Group PLC, the Bradford, England-based parent company, in a statement.

The Americas became Allied Colloids' largest market last year with almost $250 million in sales, about a third of the specialty chemical maker's total revenues. Its sales in the Americas have grown at a 17.7 percent annual rate in the past two years. The Far East, while a much smaller market, is growing at more than 20 percent a year.

Allied Colloids also announced the construction of a $42 million plant in West Memphis, Ark., to produce one of the raw materials that goes into the flocculant product. When it opens in late 1998, that plant will produce 44 million pounds a year and employ 20 people.

Harris could not say when the expansion in Suffolk would begin, but added, ``If they're going to complete it by the summer of 1999, they're going to have to start it soon.''

Allied Colloids is expanding the Suffolk facility because it has the space to do so, Harris said. The company initially opened its doors there in 1983 in large part because of the proximity to the port of Hampton Roads, Harris said.

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