New manufacturing facility coming to Lufkin!

“Our manufacturing economy continues to move forward at a fast pace,” Lufkin EDC director Bob Samford said. “I think this is attributable to our prior success, people are starting to take notice of our city and understand the attributes we bring with our manufacturing workforce.”

“They didn’t want any incentives, they wanted to be in Lufkin,” Samford said.

“This represents good news in a very scary environment,” Lufkin Mayor Bob Brown said. “It is a promise that we’re all hanging on. We will get through this. And these people have been all over the United States looking for another piece of property to expand their business — this is economic development at it’s best.

“They have made a lot of business decisions and Lufkin won. We’re thrilled to death — not only with them locating here, but there being the availability of an existing building.”

Standridge is a family-owned business, and they have already made monetary donations to local educational programs and other charitable organizations in Angelina County, Samford said. They have already proven that they will be good neighbors in Lufkin, he said.

Standridge offers diverse services in the thermoplastics processing industry. They serve markets in the plastics industry including blown film, cast film, blow molding, injection molding and profile extruding.

They offer a single source for standard colors, custom colors, additive concentrates, custom compounding, custom resins and specialty dispersions with an expansive array of support and technical expertise, a press release by the EDC said.

“We understand that our customers are our future, we believe in providing quality products and we are confident Lufkin will be a great addition for our United States operations,” Bob Standridge, owner of Standridge Color, said.

Samford said this is a sign that the Lufkin economy will continue to grow — their office has no plans to stop that growth, even with the threat of COVID-19, coronavirus growing regionally. They want to continue pushing economic growth across all sectors, but in manufacturing especially and hope that this news brings residents some hope for the future of the city.

“Our economic development strategy is not going to change,” Samford said. “We have new people interested. We have a new company doing some site testing. All things right now are pointing up.”