Vulcan, Inc. hosted five South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce Diplomats and the Director of Member Services to a plant tour on Jan. 26. The facility, composed of five integrated manufacturing facilities, a Technology Center and corporate offices, is located on a 35-acre campus on Berry Street in Foley.  Tommy Lee, Vice President, Vulcan Aluminum, conducted the tour.

The tour was an end-to-end display of Vulcan capabilities in three of the five manufacturing facilities. It started with the introduction of the raw aluminum ingots into the furnace, proceeded through both hot and cold rolling, surface cleaning, cutting to the required shape and finished with screen-printing to provide the finished product.

As an item of “trivia,” Mr. Lee noted that a stop sign is not white letters on a red background, but rather red screened over a white background to form the “STOP.”  Of particular interest was the use of a Vulcan-designed robot in forming the required shapes to meet federal finish specifications.

At various stops along the route, Lee answered questions from the Diplomats which addressed Quality Control, engineering, metallurgy, safety, staffing, local, state and federal regulations, materiel movement and sales.  At the completion of the tour, Mr. Lee presented each Diplomat with a memento of the experience:  an “Alabama stop sign.”

The Diplomat Program is a key element of the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce interface and interaction with its members.  It is an opportunity for interested businesses and/or their employees to enhance their visibility in the community and contribute to the Chamber mission in an additional forum.  Persons interested may contact Cindy Higginbotham, Director of Member Services, at the Chamber offices, 943-5510.

Jay Jennings and Dale Sommerfeld, Chamber Diplomats, contributed to this article.