AZEK reopens old ShopKo warehouse as a manufacturing plant

The monster-sized building off of East Gowen Road in Boise may be the most written-about property in the Treasure Valley. Built in 1992 and expanded in 2000, the 348,149-square-foot structure was once the giant distribution warehouse for ShopKo. Located on 50 acres in southeast Boise, the former warehouse officially opened on Oct. 12 as the AZEK Company’s newest manufacturing facility.

AZEK is a 40-year-old firm that manufactures outdoor building products such as decking, railing and trim using materials like plastic waste, recycled wood and scraps to manufacture. AZEK’s products use up to 90% recycled material. Headquartered in Chicago, AZEK has manufacturing and engineering facilities in Georgia, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Boise facility that opened on Oct. 12 currently employs 70 people. As the products made at the plant expand and the facility moves toward acquiring and using locally sourced materials to recycle, the projected number of employees will go up to 150.

The new Azek plant in Boise

“We have invested $140 million to date in creating this plant,” AZEK CEO Jesse Singh told the Idaho Business Review. “We’ll invest even more as we continue to expand it.”

The building was reconfigured with sustainability as a guiding principle, using energy-thrifty utilities like evaporative cooling AC and sustainable building materials in its remodeling.

The plant hardly resembles a warehouse anymore. The firm has installed machinery to produce two board products using recycled wood and PVC material. AZEK has also installed one line for a third product, porch or deck rails made out of recycled aluminum. The plant was also refitted with new capabilities for both manufacturing and shipping.

“The property came with one rail spur,” explained Dugan Murray, the senior director of operations for AZEK, who will manage the Boise facility. “We put in two additional rail spurs, which is when we found out that a lot of Boise is underlain by volcanic rock.”

AZEK also installed 24 silos taller than the roof of the building to store its starting materials with room left over to install a 25th.

“We had to get a variance from the airport to put in our silos because they are taller than what’s usually allowed,” Murray remarked.

“Because we’re close to the Boise airport, we put our AZEK and TimberTech brand signage on the roof,” Singh added.

Innovation in facility and workflow

AZEK stated it prides itself on its innovations in both products and process. That innovation starts outside the plant with the pre-assembled loads in the truck lot outside the plant.

“When (the trucks) arrive…we already have all their material pre-staged and ready to go,” Murray explained. “We will know exactly what’s on that truck. We’ll verify it to make sure it’s on the truck. And then that truck will head out to the tarping station. Finished goods trucks will come up to scale so we’re sure they’re OK to go on the roads…and then we hit something really innovative.

“Part of our requirement is that our product has to be tarped during transportation. That typically means the drivers have to get up on top of that load to tarp it. What we did was design and build what we call the tarping station. Drivers on the ground, all they need to do is park their truck and we add the tarp.”

The machinery at the tarping station is set up with huge rolls of tarping material that mechanically wrap up the load leaving the plant.

“This is actually super innovative. Before this, I had never heard about anything like this before,” said Murray. “Our truck drivers love it because it just saves them the trouble of jumping on top of a load to tarp their trucks, which is very dangerous to do.”

Inside the AZEK production process

“We ship product through normal shipping hours, but this is a 24/7, 365 days a year plant. We have four crews…once they start up, the extrusion lines don’t want to stop,” Murray said.

The plant produced its first extruded wood-composite boards on May 13. Several composite decking lines are already up and running. The recycled-wood mix is pelletized and formed into the core of the composite boards. The outside materials are dyed, mixed and sent to the extruder, where the core and the outside are extruded together. The nascent composite board is textured, cooled and finished before it is cut by a traveling saw near the end of the line. Once cut, it is stacked and wrapped and made ready for shipping. Every two and four hours, the quality staff inspects the product and rejects anything sub-standard.

“The beauty of using recycled materials is that we reuse all our own scraps,” Murray stated. “Anything that doesn’t pass our quality inspection goes right back into the process.”

For the second product made by the new plant, the machinery for the extruded recycled-PVC boards is already in place.

“The PVC side of the plant is scheduled to be in production next year,” remarked Murray.

AZEK has also installed one line for a third product, which is deck railing made out of recycled aluminum. The machinery for the line was sent to Boise from AZEK’s plant in Eagan, Minnesota. To create its innovative products, AZEK designs and builds the majority of its own proprietary manufacturing equipment, including that for the aluminum railing line.

Even the recipes are trade secrets.

“For the PVC products, we start with a proprietary mix in a blending tower,” Murray explained.

The colors and textures are designed by the firm’s technical and engineering staffs. The finished products are sold both by consumer retail and professional contractor supply companies.

Singh explained: “The market is mixed between retailers like Home Depot and Lowe’s and a lot of professional places where contractors go, like the various lumber yards.”

The plant also includes a training facility to bring contractors and other construction professionals up to speed in the use of its recycled products.

AZEK Ribbon cutting

A crowd of around 200 employees, guests and members of the media attended the opening ceremonies on Oct. 12. Besides the usual ribbon cutting and remarks by dignitaries, the plant opening festivities included tours of the facility and planting a tree.

In keeping with Boise as the City of Trees and the regional efforts to maintain the native tree-rich habitat of the Boise River Valley, AZEK planted a London Plane tree with the collaboration and help of the Treasure Valley Canopy Network.

The dignitaries who spoke at the ceremony included Bill Connors, CEO of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce; Sean Evans, CEO of the Meridian Chamber of Commerce and a past publisher of the Idaho Business Review; Susie Davidson, the business attraction manager of the Idaho Department of Commerce and David Miles, chief of staff for the City of Meridian.

As to what sort of business neighbor AZEK will be in the Treasure Valley was best summed up in the remarks made by Connors: “Most of those companies (looking to move to Boise) come to us and say, ‘What can you give us? What can you do for us?’ This company did just the opposite. They came and met with us and said, ‘How can we be a better part of the community? What can we do for you? How can I sign up for the chamber? What else can we do for you?’ And that’s the kind of company we want in our valley, a company with a sense of corporate citizenship, and a company that wants to put down roots.”

The history of the AZEK Boise plant facility

1992: ShopKo distribution warehouse built on East Gowen Road on 50 acres of sagebrush desert in southeast Boise.

2000: Warehouse expanded to 348,149 square feet.

2005: ShopKo sold to Sun Capital, a private equity firm in a highly leveraged purchase.

2019: Sun sends ShopKo to Chapter 11 and then liquidation when its $1 billion revenues can no longer support its $10 billion debt.

May 2019: Leasing agent TOK leases former ShopKo warehouse to solar panel manufacturer Solitco. As of Oct. 13, 2022, the solitco.com website still shows the facility as the home of a future Boise manufacturing facility.

August 2020: Solitco lease deal falls through.

Oct. 21, 2020: LDK Ventures of Sacramento announces the purchase of the ShopKo warehouse.

March 2021: AZEK signs a 15-year lease for the Boise Logistics Center with LDK with the intent of converting the space into a new manufacturing facility, making it one of the largest buildings in the Treasure Valley for non-warehouse industrial use, rivaled only by the likes of Micron’s massive fab a mile to the south, the 425,000-square-foot Simplot plant in Caldwell with its giant freezer, and the oldest big manufacturing plant in the region at Amalgamated Sugar in Nampa.

August 2021: AZEK breaks ground on converting the former warehouse into a manufacturing facility.

May 13, 2022: AZEK produces its first extruded wood-composite board at the Boise plant.

June 8, 2022: LDK officially announced the sale of the AZEK Boise plant property to a joint venture of national commercial property investment and management firms Greenlaw and Invesco.

Oct. 12, 2022: AZEK holds an opening ceremony for the Boise plant.

Editor’s note: This article was updated Oct. 17, 2022 to correct a process description and a quote.