Bob and Pat Endries, founders of Endries International were looking for a dependable source of plating for the fasteners supplied to their customers. In May of 1979 the zinc plating operation began with the barrel line being Professional Plating's sole production area. In June of 1983 the company expanded its zinc plating capabilities with the purchase of a Cyclemaster rack line. With increased production, and regulation changes made by the Department of Natural Resources and the Environmental Protection Agency, our wastewater system needed to be enhanced. A sludge dryer and filter press were added, making it possible to compress waste materials to a dry form and transport out of state for disposal.
1988 brought further expansion to Professional Plating. A thorough study brought information from many manufacturers that an acrylic paint was being requested. A 12,000 square foot addition became home for our Acrylic E-coat line, and our lab was upgraded to include precision testing equipment. In the fall of 1991, Professional Plating Inc. found a need to enhance the E-coating choices offered to our customers. The addition of an Epoxy e-coat line proved to be beneficial to Professional Plating and it opened up a greater market of customers. As Professional Plating continued to grow and become more successful, a realization that our rack zinc line was being run to capacity and customer demands continued to increase brought on the addition of a second rack production line. A building addition to house this new line, more office space, increased customer storage and a separate maintenance area was completed in 1993. In 1998, Professional Plating added a state of the art powder coat system. This system has a ten stage pre-treatment system, which includes a non-chrome sealant. The ability to run a wide variety of parts, and the vast selection of colors available make this process an attractive option to manufacturers. With this newest addition also came the expansion of our lab area, three shipping docks, and additional storage for finished products. In 2002 Professional Plating once again upgraded our wastewater system, by updating with a 5,000 square foot wastewater treatment system. The new system places Professional Plating ahead of EPA and DNR regulations along with reducing hazardous waste disposal costs. The spring of 2009 brought new and exciting things to Professional Plating. ft addition, bringing us to 150,000 sq. We also added a state of the art zinc barrel plating line. The new line features all RoHS compliant finishes, and is fully automated.
2013 was a year of change for some of our production areas. One of the rack zinc plating lines that had been in operation at Professional Plating since 1990, was decommissioned after we purchased a new, custom-built plating machine. The new line was operational in May and has allowed us to improve efficiency and design enhancements to ensure repeatable and consistent quality. In November of 2015, Professional Plating moved ahead with its next major expansion. We first moved an existing 10,000 square foot building to a separate property offsite of our Northway Drive location. This allowed us to construct a new 60,000 square foot addition. Along with that addition came a new state-of-the art zinc rack plating machine. The building and equipment installation was completed and started up in November 2016.
2018 saw the next major addition to our arsenal with a brand new zinc rack plating line being added - called our Rack 5. In June of 2021 we issued purchase orders to launch our next major piece of capacity growth at Professional Plating. We began the process of procuring and installing our NEW Rack Line 6 zinc rack plating machine. This machine started production in June of 2022. In 2023, a 4.5 million dollar new barrel line was added and allowed us to double our barrel plating capacity. This additional line allowed many ergonomic and efficiency gains that were not available before. In January 2024 Professional Plating broke ground on a new epoxy line. This 5.4 million dollar project allows us to increase rack capacity by 30%. The addition of auto feeders for chemistry, computerized temp. control, and auto start up have allowed many efficiency gains.
