Gage Products, an automotive paint systems, solvents, and fuels supplier, today officially opened its new $3 million innovation center at the company’s 12-acre headquarters campus in Ferndale.
Community leaders along with a number of state and local officials took part in grand opening ceremonies for the new facility, which will house research-and-development, quality control and customer service laboratories.
“The new Gage Innovation Center underlines our ongoing commitment to customer service, innovative product development and continued growth,” says Dan Finkiewicz, chairman and president of Gage Products. “It also will lead to up to 10 to 15 new jobs over the next several years.”
He says the company the new 5,000-square-foot facility nearly doubles laboratory space previously housed in two separate buildings at Gage’s Ferndale headquarters.
More than a dozen technicians and scientists work in Gage’s quality control and research-and-development labs. Co-locating quality control and R&D activities in the same building will facilitate more collaboration and enable both teams to make full use of new state-of-the-art laboratory equipment installed at the center.
The new Gage Innovation Center will contain more than 50 pieces of highly technical lab equipment. The new facility will include the additions of a gas chromatograph and a combination gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer, both critical to a multitude of tests run by Gage scientists.
“We’ve seen significant growth over the past several years and this investment will allow us to further improve customer service and grow our business in the years to come,” Finkiewicz says. “The Gage Innovation Center will help us bring new products to market and bring new markets to Gage.”
