Axel Americas recently announced that it would cease operations at its manufacturing plant in North Kansas City, Missouri, moving grease production entirely to its newly expanded Rosedale, Mississippi, facility.
The North Kansas City plant manufactured around 8 million pounds of grease annually at its peak, but it has been operating since 1929, so the company decided to move production to the modernized facility in Mississippi, said Tom Schroeder, president of Axel Americas.
We recently made a significant investment that expanded our production capabilities in Rosedale and increased our capacity by approximately 17 million pounds. This investment also included state of the art control systems, which will help us better track and control the entire production process, Schroeder explained via email. As a result, our Rosedale operation is better equipped at meeting the changing demands of our customers.
The North Kansas City site has a research and development center, which Axel will continue to operate.
Axel completed the expansion of its Rosedale plant in February, installing a production line of calcium sulfonate, an additional polyurea production line, four processing kettles, grease and base oil storage tanks, automated control systems and a cartridge filling line.
Photo: Axel Americas
Grease production at the Mississippi facility was briefly interrupted in February due to a fire that damaged some process equipment and pumps. Equipment installed during the expansion did not suffer damage during the incident.
Axel Americas LLC is part of Nol, Sweden-based Axel Christiernsson, which has production sites in Sweden, the Netherlands, France and the United States. The company acquired U.S. grease manufacturer Jesco Resources in 2011, gaining access to two grease production facilities with a combined capacity of 16,000 tons per year.