Our History

Teknor Apex Company traces its origins to Apex Tire, a company started on Westminster Street in Providence, Rhode Island in 1924. Alfred A. Fain, a retired wholesale grocery executive and his son-in-law, Albert Pilavin, grew this tire sales and recapping business until it had expanded to include 16 retail tire stores along the East Coast.

Alfred's son, Norman M. Fain, joined Apex Tire in 1936 upon graduation from the Uni-versity of Rhode Island, after having worked after school and during summers at the Providence store. The Hurricane of 1938 devastated much of Rhode Island, including Apex Tire. The Company was quickly moved to a mill building on Central Avenue in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the site of its corporate headquarters today.

In 1943, at the height of World War II, Apex Tire began rebuilding tires for naval air-craft. The Company used so much rubber for the war effort that the government authorized the purchase of rubber mixing equipment. The first Banbury mixers and mills arrived and Apex Tire started mixing rubber in 1945, changing its name to Apex Tire and Rubber Company.

The transition continued from tire recapping to the mixing and supplying of rubber com-pounds for industrial uses in New England, including wire insulation and jacketing, shoe soles and other molded rubber products.

In 1946 Victor J. Baxt, a chemist and friend of Norman Fain's from the University of Rhode Island, joined the Company to head the newly acquired Thompson Chemical Company, also located in the Central Avenue mill complex.

Later in 1946, at the request of neighboring company, American Insulated Wire, the Company began the mixing of vinyl compounds in a spare Banbury. This was as a result of a shift from the use of rubber to vinyl materials by the wire and cable industry. In an effort to integrate its compound business, Apex Tire and Rubber also began manufacturing its own vinyl resin and plasticizers as this part of the business continued to grow.

Vinyl garden hose production was begun in the Pawtucket, RI plant in the late 50's as an outgrowth of the company's vinyl production. The Lawn and Garden business at Teknor Apex has also grown over the years and Teknor Apex is now one of the top manufactur-ers of garden hose in the United States. At one time, the Company even manufactured hula-hoops, a process similar to extruding garden hose!

As the Company grew into a national organization, plants were built in Hebronville, MA (1956) and Aberdeen, MS (1959). The Massachusetts plant produced chemicals and PVC resin. A separate building in Hebronville was used to produce phthalic anhydride. The Mississippi plant produced PVC compounds, plasticizer and PVC resin and began garden hose production in 1961.

Herbert Malin joined the company in 1956 as a chemical engineer, coming from Dow Chemical, and, with Norman Fain and Victor Baxt, became a member of the core team that successfully built Teknor Apex into what it is today.

In 1959 Teknor Apex began selling colorants for plastics to customers buying its vinyl compounds. After the acquisitions of several colorant companies over the years, Teknor Color Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Teknor Apex Company, was born in 1981.

In 1964 Thompson Chemical and Apex Tire and Rubber Companies were sold to Conti-nental Oil Company (Conoco). The companies were renamed Thompson Apex, a sub-sidiary of Conoco. During this time, PVC resin plants were built in Assonet, MA and England. The TA diamond logo, which originally stood for Thompson Apex, was devel-oped by Conoco.

As a result of additional acquisitions by Conoco, in 1967 the U.S. government charged Conoco with restraint of trade and insisted that it divest itself of some of its purchases. In 1968 Norman Fain repurchased the Pawtucket and Hebronville plants from Conoco and the present day Teknor Apex Company came into existence. The name, with its initials T and A was chosen so Norman Fain's new company could continue to use the TA diamond logo developed by Conoco.

Expansion continued with the construction of a plant in Brownsville, Tennessee (Haywood Company) in 1971 and the acquisition of a business in City of Industry, Cali-fornia (Maclin Company) in 1977. Teknor Apex was now a truly national company.

From the time the Company was relocated from Providence to Pawtucket, there had been both a retail store and a manufacturing facility in the mill on Central Avenue. Continued growth of the retail side of the business resulted in the construction of three Apex de-partment stores in Warwick and Pawtucket, RI and Swansea, MA.

With the retail portion of the building now empty, the space was redesigned in 1974 to house the corporate offices of the growing manufacturing business. The architect, Warren Platner, was famous for designing the original Windows on the World restaurant on the top of the World Trade Center. The Teknor project took about two years and the resulting offices were so striking that Mr. Platner included the project in a book he wrote entitled "Ten" about his ten favorite design projects.

Jonathan D. Fain, Norman's son, joined the Company in 1972 and is now president and CEO. Norman Fain died on November 1, 2003 in his 89th year. He came into the office every day until about six weeks before his death.

Teknor Apex has continued its growth with acquisitions of two colorant companies: Ac-curate Color and Compounding, Lodi. Ohio in 1995; and Progressive Polymers in Jack-sonville, Texas in 1996. In 1998, QST, a compounder of thermoplastic elastomers in St. Albans, Vermont was purchased.

Construction of plants in Fountain Inn, South Carolina in 1992 and Henderson, Kentucky in 2000 added additional strength to the growing Company.

In October of 2001, Teknor Apex became a global company with the acquisition of Sin-gapore Polymer Corporation, the largest and most diversified compounding facility in the Asia-Pacific. SPC specialized in the same product areas as those that have formed the core of the Teknor Apex plastics business for decades. The plan was for Singapore Poly-mer to operate as in the past with integration of new products and technical support from Teknor Apex.

On December 31, 2004 Teknor Apex purchased engineering thermoplastics compounder, Chem Polymer. Chem Polymer produces reinforced, filled and specially modified com-pounds of nylon 6 and 66, acetal, PBT and PET. With plants in the UK and the U.S., the purchase of Chem Polymer was in keeping with Teknor’s long-range strategy of broaden-ing its technology base and expanding its geographic reach through acquisitions and alli-ances.

In August of 2006, Teknor Apex announced the phasing out of its Rubber Division. This phase-out also affected the Blocks and Mats Division that was sold on January 1, 2007. This difficult decision put the company completely out of the rubber business for the first time since it was founded in 1924 and sharpened its product focus on advanced polymer compounds.

In October of 2007 Teknor Apex celebrated the grand opening of Teknor Apex (Suzhou) Advanced Polymer Compounds Co. Pte Ltd in the Suzhou Industrial Park, Jiangsu, China. The plant has the capacity to manufacture rigid and flexible vinyl, thermoplastic elastomers, engineering thermoplastics and other specialty compounds. The opening of this plant firmly establishes Teknor Apex as a single source for customers who process in different locations around the world and require precisely the same compounds at each one.

Today Teknor Apex Company is an international custom compounder of advanced poly-mer materials with a focus on vinyls, thermoplastic elastomers, engineered thermoplas-tics, colorants and chemicals. For the U.S. market, Teknor Apex is still one of the largest manufacturers of garden hose. It remains privately held and headquartered in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

As from the beginning, in all of its businesses, Teknor Apex still prides itself on its commitment to technical innovation, quality products and custom ser-vice.