Pressac, Inc. :
Leaders in Automotives and Automation
     The name Pressac may not come as readily to the mind as Mercedes, Ford or Chevrolet when one thinks of the automotive industry, but Pressac, Inc. is one of the reasons that such companies remain at the top of their game.
     Pressac, Inc. manufactures circuit boards and flexible circuits for automobiles, and, as befitting a company that deals in high technology, their Cullman County plant is a model of automation and innovative design.
     A recent Chamber of Commerce Existing Industry tour of Pressac allowed many local business persons a close-up look at one of the area's most successful companies.
     A group of English companies, Pressac established a plant in Cullman some 10 years ago in order to have an operational base closer to their customers, who by and large include the major American car manufacturers.


Paul Goodwin, manufacturing supervisor for Pressac, Inc.,
 shows one of the many circuit boards produced by the
 company to the Chamber tour group.
     "What we do, mainly, is a chemical process by which we etch away unwanted copper from an imprinted circuit," said Phillip Clay, Vice-President of Operations for Pressac. "Our products appear in all the major vehicles made in the U.S. and some in Japan."
     The company specializes in instrument arrays for dashboards, but their main focus is a pressure-sensitive horn switch for airbag equipped vehicles.

Pressac's Vice President of Operations,
Phillip Clay, provides the Chamber tour
group with background on the company.		      "We manufacture one million circuits per year with our process and use some 12.5 million feet of copper per year," Clay noted. "We're the second largest automotive circuit plant in the world."

      We have a sister plant in England that produces more; both combined make Pressac the largest manufacturer of flexible circuits in the world."
     Aside from the automotive arm of Pressac, the company also specializes in telecommunications equipment and components for cellular phones, Clay noted.

"It's an excellent
facility ... a very impressive operation."

     -- Alan Arnett
         Cullman Area
 Chamber of Commerce
     "Our forte is really automation," Clay said. "A lot of the machines you see here were designed and built by Pressac."
     The Chamber tour group was led through the facility by Paul Goodwin, manufacturing supervisor for Pressac, who provided more information concerning Pressac's impressive production numbers.
     "Our line produces 10,000 circuits in an hour," said Goodwin. "We have a three-day turnaround for products, which explains why there are so few products to be found in our shipping and receiving area."

     One of the more interesting facets of the Pressac facility is an on-site wastewater treatment operation made necessary by the company's chemical etching process.
     "We pride ourselves in putting out water that is actually cleaner than when it came in," Goodwin said, exhibiting samples of water used in the company's etching. "All the chemistry we generate is recycled."
     Goodwin explained that the legal limits for wastewater chemicals are currently at .75 parts per million gallons, while Pressac's output runs at .03 parts per million.
     "We're environmentally friendly," he said.
Goodwin shows some test samples of the water used in the Pressac chemical process prior to treatment.
     Other areas of the plant include the chemical process areas, silk screening, component manufacture and assembly areas and shipping and receiving. Throughout the plant, cleanliness and efficiency are evident.
Views from Pressac
(Click on thumbnails for larger pictures.)
boardrolls.jpg (56179 bytes)
Rolls of circuits prior to cutting.		 plant1.jpg (74569 bytes)
The chemical process area of Pressac. 
bunis1.jpg (62505 bytes)
The Chamber group gets a close-up look at the Pressac chemical process.		 worker1.jpg (53846 bytes)
A Pressac employee fine-tunes the levels in a chemical vat.

     "We're proud of this factory and how clean it is," Clay said.
     Currently, Pressac has a roster of 107 employees who
are divided into three shifts. Sixty-nine of those employees deal directly with assembly,
while other positions include engineering, drafting, clerical and administration.
    Clay noted that Pressac has a "competitive training program" that includes continuing education units and other job-related vocational classes for its employees.
A display that outlines the layout of Pressac circuit boards in an instrument array. 
     Clay said that he is pleased overall with the quality of Pressac's workforce, who are by-and-large from Cullman County, but that Pressac often has to go out of state to search for for employees due to the highly specialized nature of certain aspects of the Pressac operation.

   
Chamber Executive Vice-President Alan Arnett, Pressac's Paul Goodwin, Frankie Glynn of the Cullman Times, Mike Duke of
 EvaBank, Chamber President Steve Singleton and Pete Nasetta
 of the City of Cullman Public Works Department discuss
Pressac's Cullman operation.

      "Wallace State College is a big help," Clay said. "We work with them a lot. A four-year college would help us ... not only by giving us a more qualified pool of applicants, but also by offering more continuing education classes for our employees."
     "We look for electrical engineers and often have to go to Georgia or Tennessee."
     Clay said that Cullman County has been a good site for Pressac, however, due both to the community outlook and the access to Interstate 65, which allows them to ship overland to both the Mercedes plant in Vance, Ala., and other car manufacturers in Detroit, Mich.
      "Cullman is a nice place to be," Clay said.
     Alan Arnett, Executive Vice-President of the Cullman Area Chamber of Commerce, said Cullman County is likewise fortunate to have Pressac, Inc. among its local industries.
     "We certainly appreciated the tour of the facility," Arnett said. "It's an excellent facility."
     "It helped us to see what goes on [at Pressac] and what kind of job opportunities are available. It also helps us to brag on on you," he told Clay. "This is a very impressive operation."
     For more information on Pressac, Inc., visit them on the web at www.pressacusa.com.
 
Hit Counter Send questions regarding Cullman County to rshedd@co.cullman.al.us. Send mail to rpartain@co.cullman.al.us with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 1998-2003, Cullman County Commission Office.  All rights reserved.