Toronto-based IKO, a global roofing and building materials manufacturer, is officially opening its new state-of-the-art Hagerstown production facility. The company held the grand opening celebration of IKO Northeast on May 12 at its location on Tandy Drive in Washington County. The new $70 million, 500,000 square-foot manufacturing and warehouse site is the company’s first new facility in the Northeastern U.S. since expanding into the country in 1981, and marks IKO’s sixth production facility in the nation. Since its founding in 1951, the Canadian company has grown into one of the world’s largest exporters of asphalt shingles. The company chose the Washington County area as a strategic location for shipping roofing materials from Toronto to the East Coast.

Hagerstown provided an ideal location for a manufacturer like IKO. The excellent access to both road and rail into our new site allows us to be able to both ship raw materials in for production purposes as well as finished goods out to the market. The Hagerstown site is well situated to allow us to efficiently and effectively serve the entire Eastern Seaboard from a single distribution center.

– Guy Tremblay, vice president of operations for North America

IKO has more than 3,500 employees and over 35 manufacturing plants throughout Canada, the United States, England, Belgium, Holland, France, and Slovakia, and ships its products to approximately 100 countries internationally.