RPP Products opens site in Summit Twp.
SUMMIT TWP — A Pittsburgh native is bringing 40 jobs and thousands of gallons of free hand sanitizer to Butler County with the grand opening of an RPP Products facility.
The company's founder, owner and CEO Eric Zwigart showed off the manufacturing and distribution facility at 615 E. Butler Road with a lunch and tour of the building for invited guests Tuesday.
RPP renovated the 190,000-square-foot former Carter Lumber facility, said Andrea Sorrell, an RPP marketing team member.
Zwigart said RPP Products is the nation's top manufacturer of automotive oils, chemicals, lubricants and, just recently, hand sanitizer.RPP Products makes the automotive product house brands for various national grocery store and convenience store chains.The new location is just part of the expansion since Zwigart started the company in the bedroom of his California home in 2006.“This is basically to expand the business,” said Zwigart. “Butler is a great little hub in the logistics corridor. Plus, there is a good workforce here, skilled workers here.”He's going to need at least 40 workers, both in warehousing and manufacturing, fast to staff the new building because he plans to begin manufacturing windshield washer fluid and diesel fluid at the site by the first week in October. People interested in applying should visit www.rppproducts.com.Zwigart said leaving the ash-filled skies of California for the cool, clear air of Western Pennsylvania was like coming home.Zwigart grew up in the North Hills, and after graduating from California University of Pennsylvania, he joined his father's Chalet Oil Products business until Tony Zwigart sold it to Amalie Oil of Tampa Bay.“I knew the oil business, and I started RPP in 2006 with two people,” he said.
Today, he expects RPP to generate $185 million in sales in 2020 and employ 185 people in facilities in California; Phoenix; Little Rock; Akron, Ohio; and Zelienople.With the opening of the latest site, the Zelienople location will be converted from a distribution facility to raw materials storage.RPP added hand sanitizer to its list of products since the COVID-19 pandemic.“I was out driving with my sons, and I couldn't find hand sanitizer anywhere,” he said. “I realized I had all the raw materials — the alcohol, the bottles, caps and labels.”The company retooled in seven days, he said, and began producing Premier brand hand sanitizer bottled in plastic containers originally intended to hold oil.
“It was incredible from the time I got the idea, we basically pivoted from machines set up for oil to hand sanitizer,” Zwigart said. “It's literally marketed in an oil bottle.”Hand sanitizer grew to make up 15 to 20 percent of RPP's sales, and it will remain a part of the business going forward.RPP makes more than 300,000 gallons of hand sanitizer daily and continues to ramp up its production.Part of that output was donated Tuesday to local agencies and departments, including the Butler fire and police departments, the Butler Area School District, and homeless shelters and food kitchens. Nick Morelli, interim director of business services for the Butler district, received the pallet of donated hand sanitizer. He said the opening of “the state-of-the-art facility will mean new employment.”RPP Products, said Morelli, is known for “delivery of economic value and impeccable community service.”
