Lindenhurst plant, scheduled to close, will remain open

Vaupell Inc., a maker of plastic and composite parts for the aerospace industry, has decided to keep its Lindenhurst facility open, reversing a plan to relocate operations to Everett, Washington, an executive said Thursday.

In July 2017, Vaupell, a unit of Tokyo-based Sumitomo Bakelite Co. Ltd., issued a letter to its customers saying that the Long Island facility would be shuttered and that the company would shift production to Washington state over about 12 months.

Joe Kamin, Vaupell’s director of aerospace and defense operations, said in an email Thursday that he announced the revised plan to employees and customers last week.

“At this point all plans to move have been cancelled,” he said. “The business will remain on Long Island for the foreseeable future. In fact we will be hiring additional engineering staff to support our operations moving forward.”

The facility employs 90 people and will be adding two aerospace engineers in the next couple of months, Kamin said.

“We will be working toward future growth in the aerospace composites space on Long Island over the next couple of years,” he said in the email. “We are excited and proud to remain a part of the Long Island aerospace community.”

Kamin said two factors played into the decision to keep the Lindenhurst facility in place: input from customers who wanted the defense composites unit near their East Coast production lines, and the workers at the facility whose skills and experience are difficult to duplicate.

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“Continued risk assessments were done as part of the process to relocate the business,” he said. “As the project progressed, it became apparent the benefit of having the team remain in place outweighed the risk of moving to the West Coast.”

He said that Vaupell will keep the defense composite business on the East Coast, while establishing a commercial aerospace business on the West Coast to serve customers such as airliner makers Boeing Co. and Airbus Group.

Vaupell’s customers on Long Island include Hauppauge defense contractor GSE Dynamics Inc.

The Lindenhurst facility, formerly known as Russell Plastics Technology Co., was acquired by Vaupell in June 2011. In June 2014, Sumitomo acquired Vaupell from Miami private equity firm H.I.G. Capital for $265 million.

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Vaupell also has locations in Agawam, Massachusetts; Constantine, Michigan; Hudson, New Hampshire, and Dongguan, China.

By Ken Schachter

kenneth.schachter@newsday.comkschach

Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.