The \u201cPiggers\u201d at New Pig Corp. just seem to keep plugging away.
\nEven after an October fire gutted one of the company\u2019s most important buildings, the employees, affectionately known as \u201cPiggers,\u201d didn\u2019t miss a beat as work at the containment absorbent manufacturing company continued the very next morning.
\nOn Tuesday, the \u201cPiggers\u201d moved another step forward when they learned their parent company was going to be one of four Pennsylvania businesses that will receive a Pennsylvania Industrial Development Authority loan.
\nAccording to Rebecca Cowan, the company\u2019s vice-president of finance, the company should receive the loan within the next 45 days. She said it will be used to purchase and renovate a 45,000-square-foot building the company is currently renting at the Ardie J. Dillen Industrial Park in Antis Township.
\n\u201cWhen we lost our big building in October, we had to relocate 74 sales, service and technical people,\u201d said Cowan. \u201cWe rented the building from C-COR Electronic and these people that were displaced in October moved right in. It\u2019s a perfect fit for what we want to do.\u201d
\nCowan said the decision to move to the C-COR building was a mutual decision.
\n\u201cWe were looking for a building that could accommodate what we want to do,\u201d said Cowan, \u201cand they (C-COR) were trying to sell the building.\u201d
\nThe loan comes on the heels of a recent decision by the Antis Township Board of Supervisors to grant the company a building permit to rebuild the lost warehouse facility.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re shooting for six months,\u201d said Scott Diminick, plant manager at New Pig, in a previous interview with The Daily Herald. \u201cEverything looks good for an August opening.\u201d
\nDiminick said the supervisors gave approval for a land development plan for New Pig to build a new and larger building at the industrial park.
\nRalph J. Albarano & Sons Inc. of Duncansville have been contracted to complete the work. This is the same contractor who completed a number of building projects in the area, including numerous buildings in the industrial park and the Blair County Ballpark.
\nPlans call for a building more than twice the size of the previous building. Diminick said it will be about 122,500-square-feet. That\u2019s a full 62,500-square-feet larger than the one that burnt in October.
\nThe fire broke out in Building Two at the containment absorbent manufacturing site at approximately 10 p.m. on Oct. 31. When the smoke cleared early the next morning, the entire contents of the building \u2013 which included the company\u2019s entire inventory, customer service area, sales area, technical service area, distribution, building and grounds and cafeteria \u2013 was amongst a pile of mangled metal and smoldering debris.
\nDuring the last week of December, Blair County Judge Daniel Milliron dictated an order which allowed several companies, all who New Pig claim could be held liable for the fire, to examine and photograph the site. These companies wanted to ensure the area was prepared correctly for when inspectors arrived to try and determine what caused the multi-million dollar fire.
\nThe court arguments began when Phillips Electronics North America Corp. asked Milliron for an injunction, barring New Pig from initiating demolition exercises at the site. The demolition was scheduled for Dec. 23 but was halted until New Pig and Phillips could provide the court with proposed work schedules so the company would not lose revenue in the time in between.
\nPhillips claimed that if demolition would have begun that day, there would have been no way the company could gather their own investigators and get them to the site in time. Phillips wanted representatives there to document the demolition and come to their own conclusions concerning the origin of the fire.
\nNew Pig has claimed that a light, produced by Phillips, may have exploded and caused the blaze.
\nLast week, New Pig\u2019s insurance company\u2019s attorney Maureen Zemel of Pittsburgh, said a cause for the blaze has not yet been established.
\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have any information because there won\u2019t be a determination of what caused the fire until they take the materials from the scene and look at them in the laboratory,\u201d she said.
\nShe also said the investigation is \u201can extensive process\u201d and that it\u2019s \u201cgoing to take some time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The \u201cPiggers\u201d at New Pig Corp. just seem to keep plugging away. Even after an October fire gutted one of the company\u2019s most important buildings, the employees, affectionately known as \u201cPiggers,\u201d didn\u2019t miss a beat as work at the containment absorbent manufacturing company continued the very next morning. On Tuesday, the \u201cPiggers\u201d moved another step […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}