Draths adding 20 jobs, moving into 30,000 sq ft Lansing facility

Thanks to a partnership with Dart Development Group and a new 30,000-sq ft facility, the entire Lansing-based Draths Corporation—including ten new employees and more on the way—is now under one big roof in Lansing.

The Draths Corporation is an MSU spin-off formed in 2005 with the idea of using fermentable sugars instead of petroleum-derived materials to produced chemicals used in the manufacturing of nylon, plastic bottles and resins. The Okemos-based company later expanded into a multiple-facility operation, including a Minnesota location, before consolidating at the new Lansing facility.

"Chemical plants usually start in a pilot phase and develop from there," says Draths Corp's operations manager, Roger Cook. Though the growing company is now in the pilot stage, they expect to move quickly into the demonstration and commercial stages over the next two to five years.

"This new facility has our lab size," says Cook. "We recently hired ten new employees and will be hiring more in the upcoming year."

In fact, while the company expects to bring on ten more highly-skilled employees in 2011, that’s just the beginning. Once in operation, the demonstration and production plants have the potential to create over 100 jobs.

Drath’s expansion came about as a partnership with Dart Development Group.

As it turned out, just when Drath needed a much larger facility and the capability of growing, Dart stepped forward with a building and a keen interest in their green technology.

"The building was really a shell when we first started talking to Draft," says Steve Mills, real estate manager with Dart. "We were able to build exactly to their specification, and we made a substantial investment—several million dollars—into the facility.

"We look at our tenants as a partnership," Mills says. "We want them to succeed."

Source: Roger Cook, Draths Corporation

Writer: Natalie Burg, Interim News Editor