AUBURN — Procter & Gamble just keeps investing.

Tambrands, the factory behind the company’s popular Pearl tampons, is wrapping up two construction projects that bring P&G’s total local investment to more than $10 million in the past 2½ years.

Rick Malinowski, the plant’s supply network operations manager, said a building expansion earlier this year triggered the need for more fire protection, one of the projects.

About 400 people work at the Hotel Road factory making 9 million tampons per day.

“Tampax is a national brand — we’re the sole supplier for North America — so we invest heavily in the infrastructure to make sure the plant is protected in case of any type of emergency, especially fires,” Malinowski said. “It’s a strategic site for Procter & Gamble in North America.”

Earlier this year, the company finished a $6.2 million expansion that gave it space to add two production lines.

“We needed to increase our fire protection capability, so we added on the new pump house,” he said. “Inside that, we have an emergency crisis control center. We’ll have internet access there and we’ll have a generator there so it’ll be self-sufficient.”

It’s located 50 to 75 yards from the plant. That project, which started in the spring and is expected to be finished this fall, cost $1.85 million.

The second investment, which Malinowski called the “drop lot” project, will streamline deliveries and improve safety. The $2.75 million project began last year and is expected to wrap up in the spring of 2018. It includes a guard house and a new tractor-trailer entrance off Kittyhawk Avenue.

“We were bringing trailers in and kind of parking them around the back part of the building,” he said. “It really wasn’t efficient. There’s safety concerns when you’re moving a bunch of trailers around and you’ve got people walking around. We wanted to isolate them, have it organized.”

The new lot for deliveries and pickups will improve “congestion, productivity, safety (and) being a better neighbor to the folks across the street,” he said.

Tambrands is Auburn’s largest private employer. P&G has invested more than $354 million there since 2000.

kskelton@sunjournal.com

Procter & Gamble’s Tambrands factory in Auburn is wrapping up two projects that bring the company’s local investment to more than $10 million in the past 2½ years. One of the new projects, called a “drop lot” for deliveries, can be seen at right.

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