Concordia Fibers
Adapting quickly to changing demand has become the key ingredient of success in any industry. In the manufacturing industry, adapting can be twice as difficult. But Concordia Fibers, a Coventry-based textile company, pulled it off.
Founded in 1920 as a manufacturer of silk yarns, Concordia now occupies more than 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space and has grown to become a leading producer of synthetic yarns and threads for traditional textile applications.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s Concordia was losing ground to cheaper production overseas. But instead of shutting down the company like so many other Rhode Island textile manufacturing companies, president and CEO Randall Spencer adapted and took the company's fiber-handling expertise a new level. Concordia used textile science to expand its capabilities into engineered products including advanced composites for aerospace, filtration media, power transmission belts, sailcloth and many other applications,
This work led to the development of several patents focused on a new process called commingling. Concordia developed the ability to combine two different yarns together at the filament level without adding twist or disorienting the filaments of either yarn. By combining carbon fibers with thermoplastic fibers Concordia developed a means of producing advanced thermoplastic composites by the simple addition of heat and pressure alone.
During the past five years Concordia has again taken its innovative skills into new fields. Concordia is now bringing its textile expertise to the medical and bioscience community. Utilizing its years of experience in fiber handling, the company began designing and building machines specialized in forming textile structures from resorbable fibers. A new 1,000-square-foot clean room, which allows Concordia to produce sterile material, was added in 2003 with investments from Sovereign Bank, Rhode Island's Slater Technology Fund and the Business Development Company of Rhode Island.
Soon after the installation of the clean room, Concordia employees started training to learn how to handle materials that would potential go into the human body. Currently, Spencer is working to make the biomedical section of his company profitable, hoping to eventually grow it to 30 percent of the company's revenue.
In 2005, Concordia acquired the tissue engineering scaffold assets of Albany International Research Company including equipment and the processes for making the absorbable material. Concordia is now able to produce a variety of non-woven bio-absorbable polymer substrates.
Concordia continues to design and manufacture high performance yarns for leading apparel and industrial fabric firms throughout the United States and the world, but Concordia's product offerings are more complex and offer a far greater opportunity for product development in leading growth sectors.
It is not uncommon for Concordia to design and build its own machinery for a particular application. This has helped customers realize competitive advantages and tremendous cost savings.
From its core textile business to their engineered applications and biomedical products, Concordia's common thread — a dedication to manufacturing excellence — has never wavered.