One year after winning the prestigious Airbus Supplier Engagement Award, Valence Surface Technologies (“Valence”) announces an additional expansion at its market leading facility in Wichita, Kansas. These investments are being made to ensure Valence maintains market leading position as aerospace volumes increase and to ensure sufficient capacity for the recent award of numerous SpaceX Approvals at the facility.
Based on the Wichita facility’s record setting growth rates achieved over the past 12 months, Valence is making some significant changes to increase capacity, reduce its already industry leading turnaround times and to drive significant improvement in cost productivity.
As a part of facility expansion, Valence is adding an entirely new processing line with the capability to process parts up to 14 feet in length and a new and significantly larger process water generation and recovery system. Additionally, the air handling systems are being upgraded so each building maintains positive pressure and enhanced environmental controls that ensure market leading quality rates are maintained while volumes increase.
In addition to the facility expansion and increased capacity, Valence continues to gain leverage from its focus on lean manufacturing. Improvements include dedicated work cells for the highest volume programs, redesigned digital masking systems with enhanced lighting, redesigned storage bins to free up floor space and a completely reconfigured NDT operation that increased capacity by 300 percent.
Tracy Glende, Valence chief executive officer, commented, “These additional investments once again demonstrate Valence’s complete commitment to the aerospace and defense supply chain. Along with these additional capital investments, we continue to gain new approvals and drive cost productivity from our Lean Initiatives to ensure we remain cost competitive while maintaining our industry leading quality and delivery performance.”
About Valence Surface Technologies
Valence Surface Technologies is the world’s largest independent provider of aerospace and defense product finishing services. With 11 locations, 700,000+ square feet of manufacturing space, and over 2,500 unique industry approvals, Valence processes more than 16 million parts per year. In addition to being Nadcap accredited, all Valence sites provide specialized metal processing and product finishing services to a diversified set of fast-growing commercial aerospace, defense and space/satellite markets.
About Trive Capital
Trive Capital is a Dallas, Texas-based private equity firm investing in equity and debt securities with approximately $2 Billion in capital under management. Trive focuses on investing in what it sees as strategically viable middle-market companies with the potential for transformational upside through operational improvement.