Young Industries manufactures giant mixers destined for booming Asian economy

By ERIC LONG elong@sungazette.com
MUNCY — A lot of items on store shelves are tagged “Made in China,” but one local company manufactured two large pieces of machinery and is able to proudly say “Made FOR China.”

Young Industries Inc., 16 Painter St., undertook a nine-month project and on Monday shipped two extra-large horizontal ribbon mixers to China, according to Bill Mahoney, Young director of marketing and sales.

“It’s a master batch mixer,” he said of the large, rectangular machines, which were loaded onto flatbed trucks and shipped from the plant at about 9 a.m.

“The process was designed by Union Carbide, which was bought by Dow Chemical. They sell the process and the design is part of the process.”

Tony Boroch, product engineer, said the two mixers are large-scale machines, but not the largest mixer of that type that Young Industries can manufacture.

“The mixers are 900 cubic feet. The largest we have ever made is 1,200 cubic feet (capacity),” Boroch said.

“These are 110 inches tall, 9 feet wide and 25 feet long. They can handle about 30,000 pounds of material.”

For perspective, he noted that most household refrigerators are no more than about 10 to 12 cubic feet in size.

Each mixer, with their drives (motors) attached, weighs about 35,000 pounds, he said.

“The mixers each have 125-horsepower drives and the mixers are made out of 304 stainless steel,” Boroch said.

He said the mixers are used to mix powdered materials, in this case materials that will be used for making plastic products — polypropylene, specifically. Young Industries, he explained, makes mixers from the gigantic variety down to a 1/4-cubic-foot model, all which have various industrial applications.

The large mixers bound for China are a relatively rare order.

“We get two or three orders for that mixer each year,” Boroch said. “For two of those, the cost per order is about $1 million.”

The mixer chambers were formed and shaped at the Young Industries plant, along with the mixing blades.

“The agitators are ribbons that are 1 1/2-inch thick steel that is about 3 inches wide each,” he said.

The project was ready to be completed earlier this month, but finishing was delayed when the motors were delayed in shipping. Once the motors arrived, workers installed them and made sure they were ready to go.

James E. Mothersbaugh, executive vice-president and general manager of Young Industries, said about 25 of the plant’s 70 employees were involved in manufacturing the mixers. The mixers were sold to Compass Bulk Handling System of Beijing, China, but are destined for a plant in the northern region of that country.

The mixers are so large that they are being sent to Baltimore, Md., via tractor-trailer, to a boxing company that will build custom-made crates so the machines then can be shipped to China. Cost of shipping the mixers to Baltimore and getting them on ship is about $40,000 each, Boroch said.

Mothersbaugh said orders from China is up, largely due to that country’s economic boom. He said orders from the Middle East also are up, in particular from Saudi Arabia, especially from Dubai.

He said the local banking industry has been crucial to financing such projects. Mothersbaugh said Sovereign Bank’s Williamsport office has worked with the company on this project, in conjunction with that financial institution’s international offices, to secure foreign letters of credit and other support.