Eldon James Corp. plans return to Fort Collins with expansion

FORT COLLINS —- Eldon James Corp., which had its origins in Loveland and Fort Collins but moved its headquarters to Denver in 2013, will return to the region with a 106,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Fort Collins.

The company has begun construction on the expansion project that will be built adjacent to Wilmarc Medical LLC, a sister company that operates a 93,000-square-foot facility on Precision Drive.

The woman-owned company has operated for 34 years in the state. The return to Eldon James’ roots in Northern Colorado with a manufacturing operation comes several years after Loveland, Fort Collins and Timnath attempted to help the company find a location when it outgrew its existing operations in the region. 

It manufactures a proprietary line of fittings, connectors, tubing and other parts used in industry, particularly the medical industry, which makes use of its PVC-free tubing and parts. Its business has increased substantially in the past year as vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical and medical device companies have sought out materials.

“Typically, medical device manufacturers don’t want to validate new suppliers, but the pandemic caused them to validate [others, such as Eldon James],” company president Marcia Coulson told BizWest. “It [the pandemic] brought a lot of business we would not have had,” she said.

She said the company has manufactured parts for COVID vaccine manufacturers all over the world. “Last year, we produced millions of parts for ventilator projects,” Coulson said.

The expansion will be at 3486 Precision Drive and will consist of large cleanrooms to manufacture tubing and connectors to meet the needs of pharmaceutical, medical and laboratory customers. This new capacity will compliment the large cleanroom in the Denver facility and offer customers redundancy to ensure reliable manufacturing.  

The new site adjacent to Wilmarc also will be strategic. Eldon James produces components for medical equipment, but to manufacture completed equipment for medical uses requires an FDA-certified facility. Wilmarc is certified.

“We are so proud of our valued employees who worked as a team to manufacture 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the pandemic, never missing a day, to ensure delivery of our products worldwide,” Coulson said.

She said the company employs about 65 workers in the Denver facility and will open the Fort Collins site in April next year with about 30 employees. She expects to add staff to the Fort Collins operation to grow the employee count to 65 or 70 workers within five years.

Coulson said the company will hire experienced plastics engineers but then will train other workers to handle injection molding, extrusion and other functions. 

The new facility “gives us the capacity to grow,” which Coulson expects to continue even as the pandemic dissipates. The pandemic elevated the company in the eyes of medical-device makers who had their foreign supply lines cut or who could not get parts from other domestic producers. 

“We work with a lot of hospitals, and they started to realize that they should be getting their drugs and equipment from American suppliers,” she said.

In addition to the two Eldon James facilities and the one Wilmarc plant, the company also operates a 6,000-square-foot research and development site elsewhere in Fort Collins.

National Inspection Services of Fort Collins, the trade name for William J. Warren & Son LLC, will be general contractor on the building.

Editor’s note: General contractor information was added after original publication.