Highline shifts gears to provide needed disinfectant, hand sanitizer
Memphis-based Highline Aftermarket, a distributor of automotive products, has repurposed four of its eight nationwide manufacturing plants to produce two essential COVID-19 survival supplies, disinfectant bleach and hand sanitizer. (Submitted)
Back in the good old days, before a pandemic outbreak became the underlying theme in all our lives, Memphis-based Highline Aftermarket was completely focused on being a leading national distributor of automotive products.
But within the last two months, the company rapidly switched gears, repurposing four of its eight nationwide manufacturing plants to produce two essential COVID-19 survival supplies, disinfectant bleach and hand sanitizer.
“Our teams got together twice a week and started thinking about what we could do to keep people employed and do some good,” said president and CEO Darcy Curran. “We’ve got 15 distribution centers, we’ve got the manufacturing plants, so how can we help?”
Under normal circumstances, those centers and plants supply branded automotive products like oil, lubrication, engine additives and other private-label goods to gas stations, oil change specialty shops, independent jobbers, wholesalers and big-box retailers.
Part of the Sterling Group family of companies, Highline is the largest supplier of windshield wiper fluid in America. It also manufactures diesel exhaust fluid and RV antifreeze.
“Like many others, our business started declining around mid-March,” Curran said. “Our business is very closely tied to miles driven, so when people stay home, those miles driven plummet. We are just as affected as everyone else by what’s going on.”
Curran and his team adapted quickly. Their primary objectives were to protect their workforce of more than 600 employees – about 150 here in Memphis – while also serving the greater good. In mid-March, they cranked up bleach production in their Milwaukee and Wilmington, Delaware, plants.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control recommends using disinfectant bleach to sanitize household and retail surfaces as one method of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
“When the coronavirus started to affect the country and everything that we’re doing, it really increased the demand for bleach,” said Matt Roeser, vice president of manufacturing. “So, we started to produce significantly more. We added shifts. We moved some product that was being produced in Delaware up to our Massachusetts plant to give us more line time available to make bleach.”
In a normal year, Highline sells about a few hundred thousand gallons of bleach. Current projections show demand could now increase that to over 1 million gallons a month.
“We started selling it faster than we could make it. Traditional customers and other people were buying it because people needed to clean everything,” Curran said. “One automotive retailer bought 17 truckloads of it.”
Highline Aftermarket is now using roughly 20% of its capacity to make bleach and hand sanitizer. It has the capability to make more than a million gallons of the combined products a week, should the demand call for it. (Submitted)
The brainstorming didn’t stop there. The success of its new PolyGuard Blast bleach sales fueled further inspiration, along with a greater desire to take back some of the company’s power during a time of overwhelming instability and uncertainty.
“It was empowering for our people to get together, come up with creative ideas, and see if we could turn those ideas into actual products,” Curran said. “It was empowering to not be as much of a victim of this virus. It makes you feel like you’re succeeding in doing some good, keeping some people employed and taking back a little control.”
When the World Health Organization published its Guide to Local Production of hand sanitizers, Highline executives took the opportunity and sprinted with it. They already had most of the raw materials and they were already manufacturing their own bottles.
It took only three weeks to get registered, get approved by the FDA, print labels and set up plants in Milwaukee, the Detroit area, and Albany, Oregon, for production of its 80% ethanol alcohol formula.
“A lot of the materials in the process were very complementary to what we were already doing,” Roeser said. “We didn’t have to retool, we didn’t have to order or prepare any materials that we didn’t have. We were in a good position to execute very quickly.”
On Friday, May 1, the company began distributing preorders of its new Service Champ and Prime Guard hand sanitizers to its regular customer base.
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Miles Goodman, vice president and general manager of Jiffy Lube Association of Franchisees Purchasing Co-op, was one of the first customers to preorder the hand sanitizer.
“I was happy to learn that Highline quickly jumped into manufacturing hand sanitizer so our organization could be a part of helping fight COVID-19 and supporting our employees and customer base,” Goodman said.
Highline is now using roughly 20% of its capacity to make bleach and hand sanitizer. It has the capability to make more than a million gallons of the combined products a week, should the demand call for it.
Direct-to-consumer distribution could be a future possibility, Roeser said.
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