Beaver Looking to Past, Future

Manufacturing Company Celebrates 35 years, Opens Newest Addition to Operation

Beaver Manufacturing Company, the leading converter of hose yarn reinforcement in North America, celebrated 35 years of growth and success in Newton County this month.The anniversary celebration was also timed with the official opening of the company’s new Plant 3 on Nov. 2.

“It’s been great; we’ve had constant growth,” said William Loeble, Chief Operating Officer for the company.

The company — which got its start in 1971 in an old cotton warehouse in Mansfield — has since grown to become a world-wide supplier of hose yarn reinforcement, an industrial fiber that is used in rubber and plastic hoses.

The company has grown to employ 185 workers, most living in Newton County and Jasper County. “Beaver has grown because of its quality service and dedicated employees. The company has never lost focus as a family-oriented business,” Loeble said.

As a family-oriented business, Beaver Manufacturing Co. has invested in the education of the children of its employees by becoming a “partner in education” with Mansfield Elementary School. Through the years, the company has donated books to the school’s media center, provided savings bonds to students with straight “A’s” and purchased playground equipment for the school, among other things. During the company’s anniversary festivities, Teijin Twaron and Diolen Industrial Fibers, two major fiber suppliers, presented gifts to the school in honor of Beaver Manufacturing Co.

For the first 20 years of the company’s history, its operations grew within the walls of Plant 1, located in Mansfield. For a time, the company even did yarn treating in an old movie theater building down the street from the plant. The company celebrated its 30th anniversary by opening up Plant 2, also located in Mansfield. The plant holds the company’s treating room and raw material warehouse.  It was at that point the company decided to make a major change in its business strategy in order to better compete in the global market. Instead of continuing to re-engineer previously used equipment to its own purposes, the company began to install state-of-the-art equipment, built to its own precise specifications. The new Plant 3, located between Mansfield and Newborn, will use all new equipment, according to Loeble. Loeble added that much of the company’s future expansion will take place in Plant 3, where the fiber twisting part of the production process takes place. “We are well positioned to compete globally for many years to come,” said Loeble of the company’s new milestone.