Cudahy-based Milwaukee Composites Inc. has applied for a $250,000 loan from the Milwaukee Economic Development Corp. which it says would help create up to 20 jobs over the next two years.
The application lists the MEDC loan as a supplement to its $4.5 million line or credit from North Mill Capital. It plans to use $1.9 million of the funds to refinance various notes from North Mill. Another $500,000 will be used to purchase new equipment and $2.4 million will be used for working capital.
The goal of the loan is to ease cash flow and aid growth and new sales for the company, which makes composite floors for mass transit vehicles. The company last year said it would donate the flooring for the first four Milwaukee streetcar vehicles. Jeff Kober, president and majority owner of Milwaukee Composites, reiterated that commitment today.
Milwaukee Composites plans to use the financing to buy a molding composite cell and launch a new product line–composite doors for high speed rail and subway systems. Kober said they are lightweight, corrosive resistant and higher strength than the steel doors commonly used in these applications.
“A customer asked us to do it,” he said. “They loved their floors and one of the major transit authorities in the Northeast corridor asked us to make composite doors.”
With the launch of the door line, Milwaukee Composites, which has 58 employees, could hire another 15 to 20 full-time workers over the next two years, he said.
“That would be the people that would staff some of this cell, the new manufacturing and molding cell,” Kober siad. “Those jobs are for the production of some of those products.”
