FUCHS PETROLUB SE, the world's largest independent manufacturer of high-performance lubricants and related products, last Monday announced the grand opening of a new $26 million grease manufacturing plant, research laboratory and warehouse near Chicago.

The new 34,000 square-foot factory will serve the automotive, heavy-duty truck, construction, rail, and off-road markets in North America. FUCHS supplies high-quality lubricating greases for applications across various industries. The lubricating greases are individually developed for the specific application. The balanced and complete product range of FUCHS lubricating greases offers customers technical and economical solutions for a large number of lubricating grease applications.

FUCHS Chairman and CEO, Stefan Fuchs, cut the ribbon at last Monday's official opening of the state-of-the-art facility in Harvey, Ill., with FUCHS employees and customers in attendance at the ceremony. The company's overall operations at the site, which is near Chicago's south side, employ 400 people.

"This is North America's newest and most modern grease plant," said Fuchs, who traveled from the company's headquarters in Germany to mark the plant's opening. "This new facility is a part of our worldwide strategy to have globally identical production equipment, finishing equipment, quality control test devices, and identical quality standards, all of which serve our customers with high-quality products that fit their needs."

"Our new plant near Chicago has high-end product and quality control equipment built with our customers' highest quality standards in mind," said Keith Brewer, President and CEO of FUCHS LUBRICANTS COMPANY. "We have absolutely the best facility for serving the needs of our automotive, heavy-duty truck, construction, off-road, and rail customers."

In addition to the manufacturing plant, FUCHS has built a new research and development as well as technical services laboratory and warehouse at the Harvey site. The new laboratory will be used for testing existing products and also developing new products. "This, taken together with our new testing center in Mannheim, headquarters of FUCHS, gives us unparalleled testing facilities in the automotive and industrial sectors," Stefan Fuchs said.

"We work in close contact with our customers," Brewer said. "We develop custom-made solutions for some of our most diverse applications, and the new laboratory will help us respond to customers' needs even more quickly."

The expansion of the Chicago-area site is part of EUR 300 million in investments that FUCHS is making globally between 2016 and 2018 in its manufacturing and research and development facilities. The company also expanded its facilities in Mannheim and Kaiserslautern, Germany, and is opening new plants in Wujiang, China, Australia and Sweden. The Harvey facility is FUCHS' second grease plant in the United States, with the other in Kansas City, Mo.