Looking to grow

Intek acquires former Weather Shield vinyl plant, looks to expand

The Medford business community welcomed a new employer recently with Minnesota-based Intek purchasing the former Weather Shield vinyl plant.

Intek, a family-owned company based in Hastings, Minn. purchased the facility and retained the 25 employees currently working there with plans to expand the workforce at the facility in the future.

“Intek is excited to be in Medford and we are looking forward to learning about the community and growing our brand there,” said Sonya Prange vice president of human resources and service operations at Intek. She explained that it was within the company’s strategic plan to continue to grow in the vinyl extrusion industry.

See INTEK on page 4 “We are bursting at the seams at our Minnesota facility,” Prange said. She said that in addition to the additional capacity the Medford location will bring to Intek, there was the added benefit of a trained and talented workforce at the plant who has extension knowledge of the equipment.

Prange explained that there is an art to keeping vinyl extrusion equipment running at optimum efficiency from making sure the temperatures and flow are correct and the die is properly aligned perfectly. She said there is a lot more to it than people realize.

Since individual equipment can vary, having staff knowledgeable of the equipment will be beneficial to the company going forward.

Intek is a custom extrusion provider. Construction and the windows and doors industry has always been a major part of their business but they continue to expand their customers into lighting, refrigeration and other industries.

“We serve a lot of different industries with our products,” Prange said.

Prange said that continued diversification has been a goal of the company’s plans for many years as a way to make the company more resilient to market pressures. This does not mean they have turned their back on the window industry where they have had their roots.

“We love our core business in fenestration,” Prange said, however said diversifi cation is a company priority. Prange said the company looks forward to becoming part of the Medford community.