AFG Announced A $30 Million Coating Facility In Abingdon, Va

AFG Industries of Kingsport, TN, announced the selection of a site in Abingdon, VA, for their new coating plant. The 97,500 square foot facility will be built in the Oak Park Center for Business and Industry and will employ about 70 upon completion in mid-2004. The new plant will house a vacuum coater used primarily to fabricate AFG’s Comfort Ti® family of low-emissivity and solar control coatings for the residential and commercial window markets. AFG’s coaters are also used to coat front surface mirrors (projection televisions), touch panels, plasma displays and solar panels for geothermal (heating) and photovoltaics, and electro-chromic coatings for smart windows. AFG also has coating facilities in Hampton, IA, Victorville, CA and Toronto, Canada. D. Roger Kennedy, president and CEO of AFG said, “Our home and headquarters is in Northeastern Tennessee, and we are excited to have our third coater in this region. We appreciate the extraordinary joint effort of Virginia, Washington County, Virginia’s aCorridor and the City of Abingdon in bringing us this opportunity to prosper together.” Kennedy further stated, “AFG is dedicated to growth by creating sustainable value for our flat glass and technology customers. Our Comfort Ti family of products, which will be produced at this plant, are among the most effective energy savings products in the world today, and this new coater will provide us the opportunity to serve the growing Southeastern market by providing a low cost technology to reduce air conditioning loads.” Kennedy also announced that Ed Wegener would be the plant manager. Wegener has had 15-years experience in glass vacuum coating and will be re-locating from Tucson, AZ to Abingdon with his wife and son. Mr. Wegener joins AFG from Apogee Enterprises where he was most recently, Vice President and General Manager of TerraSun LLC that is an Apogee joint venture. Previously, he had been Vice President of Viracon’s Coating Division where he had started in 1985 as a materials manager. Mr. Wegener holds a BBA from the University of Memphis and an MBA from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. The coater is being manufactured by Applied Film Industries Longmont, CO, and will be built at their plant in Alzenau, Germany. This will be AFG’s third, state-of-the-art, coater, and will provide AFG customers with leading edge, energy savings coatings. AFG is the second largest flat glass manufacturer in North America and a part of the Flat Glass Company of the Asahi Group, which is the largest flat glass manufacturer in the world. In the Tri-Cities, in addition to their Kingsport corporate headquarters, AFG operates the Blue Ridge Plant in Kingsport and Greenland Plant in Church Hill.