Selit (Erbes-Büdesheim / Germany; www.selit.com), a manufacturer of laminate and parquet flooring underlays, is building a second US plant in Banks County, Georgia, for approximately USD 45m (EUR 39m). Selit North America has an existing production facility in Plattsburgh, New York. Its regional sales office is in Atlanta, and this will also move to the site in Banks County.

Production at the new facility is scheduled to start up at the end of 2019, and will primarily be extrusion of XPS foam panels for acoustic and thermal insulation under hard flooring. About 100 jobs are to be created at the plant, enabling the company to move closer to southern US customers.

Selit North America was founded in 2010 and set up in Plattsburgh with an XPS extrusion line. A second line was added in 2013, and a third in 2016, for which an additional production building was built.

The Plattsburgh plant is a joint venture with Schlüter-Systems (Iserlohn / Germany; www.schluter.com), a company that specialises in floorcovering and profiles technology. The jv operates under SSF Production, with the shares of the jv belonging to the Seitner family.

The family-owned Selit group specialises in XPS underlays for the floating laying of parquet, laminate and vinyl floors. The associated companies Selit Dämmtechnik and Selit-Tec Dämmsysteme supply DIY chains in Europe as well as the flooring industry.

In 2017, Selit's managing directors, Marco and Rouven Seitner, entered into a strategic partnership with NMC (Eynatten / Belgium; www.nmc.eu), which produces EPS and PE foams and technical insulation. The Seitner brothers hope to drive planned investments for capacity expansion at its main plant in Erbes-Büdesheim.

Since that time, NMC holds the majority stake in Selit, and the Seitner brothers are shareholders in NMC. Hubert Bosten, CEO at NMC, also joined Selit's management. With the takeover, NMC's sales grew to more than EUR 270m and the number of employees to around 1,600.