Blue Rock Energizes Alacer's Manufacturing Expansion to the Northeast

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California-based manufacturer of Emergen-C opens a new manufacturing facility in Carlisle, PA.

When Alacer Corporation decided to expand its operations to the East Coast, the California-based dietary supplement manufacturer called on Blue Rock Construction to design and build their new facility.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell announced in May 2010 that Alacer, maker of Emergen-C, America's leading brand of vitamin C, would expand its operations to Carlisle, PA. At the time, Alacer had a very aggressive time frame for its $10 million project to be operational by early 2011.

Earlier this year, thanks to an aggressive design and construction schedule, Blue Rock Construction, which maintains offices in Burlington, NJ, and Allentown, PA, delivered Alacer a new pharmaceutical-grade production and distribution facility on January 14, 2011.

"Overall, the schedule was a challenge," said Jim Whitehead, Project Manager for Blue Rock. "It was a tight time frame, but in just six months we went from a design concept to a pharmaceutical-grade operation."

Within the 130,000-square foot facility, Blue Rock constructed the pharmaceutical-grade production and packaging rooms required to produce Emergen-C. These areas were constructed to meet GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) for the pharmaceutical industry.

"Blue Rock designed and built a dietary supplement facility that is best in the industry and they delivered it on time and on budget," said Ron Fugate, president and CEO of Alacer Corporation "This was a complex project with very compressed timelines and Blue Rock meshed seamlessly with the Alacer team to create a facility that exceeded our expectations. We take enormous pride in our new facility in Carlisle."

Other specialty pharmaceutical grade installations included water treatment, central vacuum, dust collection and food grade compressed air systems. In order to efficiently house these systems, Blue Rock constructed a 6,000 s.f. mezzanine above the production area to provide easy access for maintenance and upkeep of the systems.

Blue Rock's team worked closely with Alacer and its equipment vendors to facilitate a smooth transition and production startup.

"In order to accommodate some of the largest production equipment in the specialty rooms, Blue Rock coordinated critical deliveries with Alacer and built rooms around the production equipment" said Whitehead.

Andrew Espejo, Alacer's Vice President of Operations said, "On past projects it has taken 6 months to construct and qualify 1 piece of equipment, but here Blue Rock managed to complete an entire facility in 6 months. That is impressive."

In addition to the production line, the facility also included a 10,000 s.f. office with a data center, automated product packaging line, in-house maintenance facility and 75,000 s.f. of warehouse and distribution space.

Now that the facility is operational, Alacer sees the new production center creating 66 new positions.

With more than 400 million packets sold annually, Emergen-C is the leading brand of vitamin C in the United States.

Since 1995, Blue Rock Construction has provided professional construction-related services for over 20 million square feet of commercial and industrial property located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Florida, New York, Connecticut, Texas, Virginia, Illinois, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.