Dubai-headquartered polyolefin carpet backings and geotextiles manufacturer Mattex plans to build a $60 million extrusion plant in Murray County, Georgia, USA.

This will be the company’s first operation outside the Middle East, where it runs four manufacturing plants in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

In 2011 Italy’s Farè supplied Mattex with a polypropylene fibre manufacturing line for the production of high tenacity staple fibres at its plant in Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. Mattex is also now manufacturing thermobonded needlepunched nonwoven geotextiles on a a six-metre turnkey NSC Nonwoven (now Andritz Nonwoven) needling line.

The new US operation will create 200 jobs over the next three years.

“Mattex’s expansion speaks to the continued revitalization of the floorcovering industry in northwest Georgia,” said Georgia’s Governor Nathan Deal. “Georgia’s rich history in the industry, skilled talent and workforce training foster the ideal business environment for companies in this industry to succeed.”

“Our mission to be the preferred global partner of choice led to the decision to build a state-of-the-art carpet-backing facility in North Georgia as the next logical step for better servicing our current customer base,” said Luc Blommaert, CEO of Mattex Group. “The period we’ve been operating out of our existing distribution center can be referred to as our engagement period. Now it’s time to get married, so we are building a plant. This is the group’s fifth expansion. The choice of North Georgia was easy and the available business assets spoke for themselves.”

The manufacturing plant is ant to begin operations in 2014.

The Georgia Department of Economic Development (at GDEcD) partnered with the Murray County Industrial Development Authority to manage this expansion.

“Here’s a company that understands the importance of being close to its customers,” said Chris Cummiskey, commissioner of GDEcD. “It’s no more than a two-day truck drive to eighty per cent of the country from Georgia, which gives international companies such as Mattex a competitive advantage when they locate here.”