Toothpaste Manufacturing Facility

Colgate-Palmolive, a global leader in oral care, solicited The Austin Company to design and build a new state-of-the-art, 250,000 SF dental cream facility in Morristown, Tennessee. The manufacturing facility, employing more than 220 people, was designed and built according to Colgate’s rigorous global standards and in accordance with FDA regulatory requirements.

Austin Consulting, the site selection consulting division of The Austin Company, assisted in locating the Morristown site, and provided a full range of site location and incentive negotiation services. Once the site was selected, Austin continued to provide architecture, engineering and construction to deliver a world-class facility on an accelerated 10-month design and construction schedule.

This facility includes the following areas: receiving and warehousing, packaging and warehousing, two-story GMP standard toothpaste production, shipping, laboratories and office.

Midway through the project, Colgate-Palmolive requested that The Austin Company assist them in obtaining LEED certification for the facility. Austin started by developing a quick checklist of possible credit attempts to determine if there was a reasonable chance to achieve certification. Each available credit attempt was evaluated to determine whether it would be easily achievable with little or no additional cost added to the project, moderately achievable with reasonable costs added, or not achievable for this project. It was determined there was a good chance all the required prerequisites could be met and that the minimum 26 points could be reached for basic project certification.

Information was compiled and documented for each of the credits attempted. As the project progressed, some of the original attempts had to be abandoned or “unattempted” because there was insufficient documentation. In response, additional credits were investigated from the list thought to be achievable. When Austin’s final submittal was ready for review, all the required prerequisites had been met. Ultimately, the project was awarded LEED Silver Certification.