Westfall Technik announced that it opened a new facility near Chicago to boost its clean-room capabilities.
Las Vegas-based Westfall said in a news release that it completely refitted a brownfield structure and opened it as a purpose-built, 40,000-square-foot facility with three Class 8-certified clean rooms and one white space certified for meeting Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP).
The facility features clean rooms that can accommodate up to 23 injection molding machines and Westfall expects them to gain ISO 13485 certification by September of this year. The GMP-compliant space currently has the room to take up to 15 molding machines, with press sizes ranging from 35 tons to 400 tons in clamping force.
Additionally, the new site in suburban Chicago (Antioch, Ill.) features a fully functional tool room with dedicated, climate-controlled mold storage space. On top of all the capabilities at the new site, Westfall said it has tripled its clean room space in Riverside, Calif., doubled it in Union City, Calif., and installed new clean rooms in New Richmond, Wis., and Tijuana, Mexico, all over the past 18 months.
Westfall said it plans to install three of its M3 micromolding machines in the Chicago plant to make it a “micromolding center of excellence.” Additionally, it is considering shifting production of its NxtBio brand of bioscience laboratory consumables to the new site.
“Ultimately we will be investing millions of dollars in new, all-electric machines for this site,” Westfall COO Mark Gomulka said in the release. “This is a necessary location for us, right in the Midwest, in the middle of the medical corridor that runs from Chicago up to Wisconsin.” In the Midwest, the company already operates facilities doing toolmaking in Willernie, Minn.; molding in New Richmond, Wis.; and both tooling and molding in Wakefield, Mich., in the state’s Upper Peninsula.
