Ashley, Indiana-based Ashley Industrial Molding Inc. said it will outfit its second plant with machines made by Tianjin Tianduan Press Co. Ltd. Greenerd Press & Machine Co. Inc. of Nashua, New Hampshire, the Chinese firm's exclusive sales and service representative in North America, is coordinating the deal, which will require some major logistics.

After the massive machines were disassembled in China, the compression presses took up 60 percent of an ocean freighter, Schoon said. Then they were shipped on four barges up the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Dubuque, Iowa, where the components are being delivered to Oelwein on 53 semi-truck loads.

They are the biggest-ever compression molding machines for Ashley Industrial. The Indiana factory runs nine SMC presses, topping out at a clamping force of 3,000 tons, and four reaction injection molding machines. The company also does painting, robotic routing and trimming, and robotic adhesive dispensing, and processes bioresins for Deere & Co.

“To the best of my knowledge, that will be the most 4,000-ton SMC presses under one roof,” President Rod Schoon said.

Ashley Industrial Molding had bought the former Triangle Plastics Inc. thermoforming plant in Oelwein, Iowa, from the Blin family.

Schoon said Ashley made a major investment to prepare the 142,000-square-foot building for the big machines to run SMC, including digging a pit in the floor covered with four feet of concrete. The company also built a 75-foot-high bay area.

Company officials began looking at plant locations last summer, as the factory in Ashley was running out of capacity. Despite the recession, the timing was right, Schoon said: Industrial real estate was reasonably priced and a year ago, $4-a-gallon gas jacked up shipping costs.

Schoon said the company will add RIM molding in Iowa in the future, although there is no specific timeline.