Swan—The Watering Company has greatly expanded our manufacturing plant in Waco, Texas, to better serve our customers and our community.
Swan purchased the Waco manufacturing plant at 700 Jewell Drive in 1986. It was 103,000 square feet of space at the time and primarily responsible for garden hose manufacturing. While the plant served the manufacturing aspect of our business well, it didn’t have the space needed to warehouse the raw materials to make our products, as well as the finished goods once manufactured. The limited amount of space also forced us to hire more temporary workers rather than permanent employees.
Fast-forward to Sept. 20, 2018: Swan broke ground on a 300,000-square-foot expansion. The additional square footage was allocated to two large warehouses that essentially bookend the existing manufacturing plant—one for raw materials; the other, for finished goods. Both of these new warehouses opened in September 2019, expanding our Waco facility to a total of approximately 400,000 square feet.
This new layout maximizes Swan’s flow-through manufacturing efforts. Now raw materials can be stored in the new warehouse on one end and brought into the original plant as needed where they’re manufactured into our garden hoses. The finished garden hoses are then moved into the new warehouse on the other end where they’re stored for trucks to load and deliver to our various sales outlets. Currently, these include stores across the United States and Canada including Ace Hardware, The Home Depot, True Value and Walmart, as well as most regional hardware chains.
Bringing all aspects of our manufacturing process under one roof gives Swan a quicker time to market for our customers, especially during our busy season and periods of extreme heat and weather. The expansion also allows us to create more quality, local jobs in Waco, something we’re especially proud of.
Prior to the expansion, Swan needed to employ temporary workers during our busy season, but then had to let many of them go during our off-season. This new warehousing space now allows us to shift temporary workers into roles in our warehouses during the off-season, which dramatically increases our permanent full-time employee base while relying less on temporary workers.
Headquartered in Atlanta, Swan also has another strategically located manufacturing plant in Sparks, Nevada, where it manufactures and warehouses garden hoses. Our expanded plant in Waco now falls in line with our Sparks manufacturing plant.
To see all of Swan's garden hoses and other watering products, please visit our website.
For more Swan news, read the following articles:
Every Day Is Earth Day at Swan
Swan's New XFlex Hose Has Everything...but the Kinks!
Swan, Goodyear Partnership Produces Tough Rubber Hoses Without the Weight
