AXEL Americas, LLC announced that its Rosedale, Miss., U.S.A. expansion has been completed and is now fully operational. While AXEL Americas completed the expansion in February, the Rosedale expansion suffered a setback when a fire occurred during equipment and production batch testing.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, AXEL Americas embarked on an ambitious expansion of its Rosedale grease plant. The expansion added an additional 17 million pounds of grease capacity to this facility, raising its ultimate capacity to 45-52 million pounds of grease annually in a single shift.

The plant expansion was a response to growing customer demand for its industrial and automotive greases, which are supplied to multinational companies and large distributors in the Americas.

The multi-million dollar investment is comprised of a new calcium sulfonate grease production line and an additional polyurea grease production line. The expansion included four new production kettles, a state-of-the-art PLC system, seven new bulk finished good storage tanks, and two new base oil storage tanks. In addition to the new production lines, AXEL has also installed a new cartridge line that can fill 56,250 grease cartridges per shift.

AXEL Americas also announced that it has discontinued manufacturing operations at its North Kansas City, Mo. grease plant effective June 20. The North Kansas City plant, which was previously owned by Jesco Resources, is the second longest running grease manufacturing plant in North America, producing grease since the late 1920’s. The R&D and laboratory functions in North Kansas City will continue to operate, however.