
RIPPLE/Lindsay Craven
Brittany Rector, prototype technician, works on a piece that will go into one of many major cars that Lydall provides materials for. The company has a metals and fibers division. It makes car dash materials and thermal acoustic barriers for car makers such as Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda and Volkswagen.
Lindsay Craven
Staff Writer
Lydall, a major company and employer in the Yadkin County limits, is growing and expanding its business in Hamptonville.
The company has just built a new addition on to its 80,000 square foot facility in order to expand its factory and storage space for its metals manufacturing division.
“We were out of space, and we were awarded quite a few pieces of new business with various companies. We just didn’t have room to store the raw material here anymore so we had to build on to make space,” said Tim Byrd, purchasing and materials manager for metals operation.
The Hamptonville location also houses a 100,000 square foot facility for fibers manufacturing, and the company also leases a large location in Yadkinville for fiber manufacturing and distribution.
“We make the fibrous pads for the inside dashes for car and the exterior dashes,” Byrd said. We also make thermal and acoustic barriers. On the metal side of the business we make heat shields such as the under body piece of aluminum and the manifold pieces of aluminized steel.”
Byrd said that Lydall serves customers such as Ford, GM, Chrysler, Honda and Volkswagen. They also serve heavy truck companies and many different fuel tank companies.
“We continue to grow, and we continue to gain market share,” Byrd said. “We now employ about 700 people in this county and we only employed about 275 people in May 2008.”
Byrd said that Lydall is also expanding into robotics.
“We aquired some new robotic equipment used to assemble various parts that assemble in to power train applications and other vehicle locations,” Byrd said.
Due to these new developments Byrd says that the metals division of Lydall is looking for new, specialized workers. The ideal candidates will be recent college graduates with degrees in the technical fields.
“We’re basically looking for anything with tooling, anything that’s more on the electronic side like programming and robotics,” Byrd said. “We tend to not get a lot of applications in this area, which is highly skilled engineering type people, and those are the roles we have open.”
Byrd said that these open positions would also require a background in automotive quality.
“A strong background in automotive is good to have with knowledge of the basic requirements for tier one automotive suppliers or any of the big three,” Byrd said.
“If you’re familiar with any of that then you should be able to handle anything else.”
Reach Lindsay Craven at 679-2341 or at lcraven@heartlandpublications.com.
















