Episode #59: Maxter Healthcare’s $500M Reshoring Bet: Building America’s First Nitrile Glove Mega-Facility in Brazoria County, Texas
Matt Horine interviews Maxter Healthcare leaders Kevin Shutack, Nick Gilman, and Donny Chan about Master Healthcare's $500 million investment to build its first US nitrile glove manufacturing facility in Brazoria County, Texas, aimed at strengthening domestic PPE supply chain resilience after COVID-19 shortages. They explain why the pandemic accelerated a long-held vision, how site selection prioritized water, power, weather, logistics, and community after evaluating locations including Upstate New York and Florida, and why Brazoria County won. The guests describe the 215-acre, highly automated, hurricane- and flood-resilient plant using AI defect detection and producing 180–200 million gloves monthly today, with phase-one capacity rising and long-term plans for up to ~80 lines. They discuss serving healthcare, industrial, and federal government demand, policy signals, tariffs and raw-material challenges, and the push for long-term contracts to reduce import volatility and shortages.
Links
- Maxter Healthcare Website
- Maxter Healthcare on LinkedIn
- Kevin Shutack on LinkedIn
- Donny Chan on LinkedIn
- Nick Gilman on LinkedIn
- Veryable Is Revitalizing U.S. Manufacturing
- Navigating Trump 2.0
- Sign Up on the Veryable Platform
Timestamps
- 00:00 Welcome and Episode Setup
- 01:47 Why Reshore Gloves Now
- 03:36 Site Search Across States
- 06:51 Choosing Brazoria County Texas
- 09:46 Markets and Federal Demand
- 12:25 Policy Tariffs and Supply Risks
- 18:05 Inside the Mega Facility
- 20:44 How Gloves Are Made at Scale
- 26:10 Winning Buyers on Value
- 29:52 Expansion Plans and Contracts
- 34:24 Supply Chain Disruptions Return
- 39:49 Advice for Onshoring Builders
- 42:25 Where to Learn More
- 43:12 Closing Takeaways and Outro
Episode Transcript
Matt Horine: [00:00:00] Welcome to US Manufacturing Today, the podcast powered by Veryable, where we talk with the leaders, innovators, and change makers, shaping the future of American industry, along with providing regular updates on the state of manufacturing, the changing landscape policies and more.
Today, we're exploring one of the most strategic reshoring stories in American manufacturing, the five hundred million dollar investment by a corporation to build the first US facility for nitrile glove production in Brazoria County, Texas. It's a story about supply chain resilience, domestic capacity, advanced manufacturing, and what it takes to build a world-class facility from the ground up in America.
Our guests today are three leaders from Maxter Healthcare, the US subsidiary of Supermax Corporation, one of the world's leading glove manufacturers with eighteen facilities globally. Kevin Shutak brings executive strategy and vision. He's overseeing how this US facility fits into the global manufacturing strategy and what it means for domestic supply chain resilience.
Nick Gilman leads business development, and Donny Chan handled site selection and overall [00:01:00] leadership for community partnerships and evaluated locations across the country before Brazoria County won out, and we'll get into more of that in the show. Today, we're gonna talk about why now is the moment for domestic medical glove manufacturing, how a one point eight million square foot facility produces four hundred million gloves per month, and what it takes to compete globally in American manufacturing resilience.
Kevin, Nick, and Donny, welcome to the show.
Donny Chan: Thank you for having us, Matt, for the opportunity to share our story. We are, I think, a story of onshoring of global manufacturing man-- and marketing expertise.
Matt Horine: Absolutely. We're thrilled to have everyone from the team here, and we'll jump right into it. And we'll get to this maybe a little bit later in the show, but you guys were a great host.
I got the chance to come down and see your facility, so wanna thank you for that, and we'll maybe get into that here in a little bit. But right out the gate, I think let's start with the big picture. As a part of a global manufacturing company, but why did you decide now was the moment to establish your first US production facility?
Donny Chan: The, the vision and [00:02:00] idea for domestic manufacturing, the first US manufacturing under our parent company, we are a global company with multiple manufacturing sites. This has been a long time vision as we've been in the US market on a distribution since over two decades right here in Chicago area. So this has been a long time vision, but the challenges of the global pandemic during twenty-twenty onwards really kinda accelerated the execution of this vision.
We saw firsthand the challenges that the nation went through in securing critical PPE. We were again in the front row as the global manufacturer of PPE, where we had to support various national governments, the UK, Switzerland, Australia, on, again, critical nitrile gloves. But i- within the US, we saw the pains that the government, the various healthcare organizations, folks i- in general, over something as basic as PPE.
[00:03:00] Masks, gloves as were a very hot commodity. So that really kinda propelled the vision to execution. Of course, we did well, again, as everybody else in the PPE industry did, but we saw fit to funnel a lot of the proceeds into this war chest to fulfill this dream of domestic, uh, manufacturing and really to build up the nation's critical supply chain resilience, uh, and so forth.
So that really got the ball rolling. We, we decided early 2020, right in the thick of it, we started putting the plans into action. We did a lot of traveling to secure the perfect site. Now, just to show this commitment to the vision, the site selection itself was personally done by the president and our global CEO, so we were a very small team.
We wanted to get this site just right, the location. There are just so many factors, aside from the obvious, which is the infra, to [00:04:00] build a large scale, world-class nitrile medical glove manufacturing there, a lot of kinda infrastructure requirements, chief being really fresh water supply. But then, of course, the weather, and then there was the power, and then we took into conside- consideration logistics.
But also a big part of that was community, because we're not just building, uh, manufacturing. We, we want to build around a community, to be part of the community. Going back to 2020, as you know, PP in particular were particularly sexy. We... When we had announced that we were shopping for sites, a lot of our partners reached out, and we, and also from then on, conversations with the US Commercial Service, a, a lot of states wanted to be a part of it.
Got a lot of great invites, a lot of incentives, uh, great stuff that were offered. We started our journey at the request of one of our partners in Upstate New York. It was a very [00:05:00] great site, but ultimately the weather being Upstate New York cold was not conducive to our wastewater, as well as our production processes.
So from then on, we had thought of Florida as a great candidate. Our founder president had always had a, uh, an affinity to Florida, and indeed we, that is the state we had spent the longest time. Florida, we pretty much canvassed the whole state. We started from the Panhandle up North Jacksonville all the way down, and then west, the Tampa area.
Uh, and great folks that, that we worked with, the economic development folks, Enterprise Florida, were super. It's a great team, great support. We almost signed off on a beautiful site after weeks and weeks of traveling in the Jacksonville area. There was a little delay in the kinda incentives packaging from the state of Florida.
That kinda gave us a thought, "Hey, why don't we just hop on the plane and cross over to [00:06:00] Houston?" Because, uh, I think it was, there was a suggestion of us to check out Houston So we landed in Texas pretty blindly. There in itself, that was a very funny story. The contrast between Florida, who gave us really almost white glove treatment, where they held our hands.
Once we landed in Texas, it's like, "Oh, welcome, welcome to Texas, y'all. Find your way around." That in itself, the design of it really afforded us to be more exploratory. We had looked at sites in the Baytown area at first. It was very much very industrial, but ultimately maybe too industrial for where, what we were trying to do, which is medical products.
That's where the, the Exxon facility was. We went out west to Waller, great site there, and they... One of the selling points were we were right down the street from a big Buc-ee's. And then we went as far east as Beaumont. But Brazoria County was really almost the last suggestion. And sometimes the saying, as the saying goes, you, you save the best for [00:07:00] last.
That certainly is the case with our site shopping journey because it really was the last county, last location in a long kinda journey of site shopping, the different counties, the different cities. Brazoria County, that was really a funny story. Our economic incentives guy will always have a chuckle at how Brazoria County came about because we were quite dead set on the, on Baytown at the time.
There, there was some really nice kinda development, almost shovel-ready So we were in the men's room. You know, very often the best conversations begin in the men's room. All right. So
Kevin Shutack: Donny's going there, it sounds like. All right. "
Donny Chan: You guys, it's a nice site in Baytown. You guys ever considered Brazoria County?"
I was like, "No, not really. How is that in relation?" So we came out, we looked at the map, it started to make a lot of sense. It was right off 288, the proximity to the Port of Houston, Freeport, and so forth. Then we, again, [00:08:00] we started exploring on our own. We drove around some great sites. We settled on Rosharon, and then we started the conversation with the county.
Again, it goes back to what I said earlier about how community was key, is key for us. 'Cause we're not just setting up a, a manufacturer. We, we want... We're setting up a home, and that's how we framed, uh, the search criteria because not just a home for our manufacturing, the home for our vision, but also the home for our future employees, right?
We, the, there was always the consideration. Our founder and president always stressed the need for, uh, the perfect kind of work and play balance, and I think right off the bat, Houston afforded that. It has a big city feel, but it's also, there are pockets of a little town feel. It's a diverse community.
It's a fast-growing city as well. Logistically, everything, it checks all the boxes. And mind you, this was 2020, '21. We may have been ahead of the curve, as Houston is the hot bed right now [00:09:00] for investment.
Matt Horine: Houston is, it really is. It's the number, Texas is the number one state for doing business. I've heard that on a number of different shows and folks.
And truly a greenfield, not just like a descriptor there, a greenfield down there in Rosharon when we got to visit the factory. But also, you touched on something really important because I think the framework around a lot of what people think about medical supply chain, right? They immediately revert back to 2020 because of how much noise it was getting, and we truly discovered how unprepared we were as a country.
And one thing that I learned, we had a previous guest on this program named Scott Mayer from BlueStar. I had followed him on X for a long time. I had no idea how much it was a critical capacity constraint in industrials. You think just the rubber gloves, it's just healthcare. And so Kevin, sending your way just to, to maybe add to that, what market was the compelling push to get you here?
Because the medical field is obviously underserved, but there's other verticals as well, so to [00:10:00] either one of you.
Kevin Shutack: Absolutely, Matt, and again, thank you for the opportunity here. We are on a precipice of a tremendous opportunity here to be able to be able to meet the needs of the end user But that end user falls into many different industries that are out there.
You mentioned the industrial space. Here in Houston, being in the oil and gas space, there's a tremendous opportunity to utilize our gloves out there in the field. Manufacturing, that's a big part of it as well. The largest market, of course, is healthcare, but that's very price sensitive. You've got a lot of imported product that's being utilized in that area.
We have a vision on what this looks like over a period of time, where we believe that the healthcare market is going to be, uh, following the other markets that we're currently pursuing now. We're looking at early adopters that are looking for that American-made product, and they're out there. They love to carry the flag.
They want the flag on the box, and they're out there promoting this to a lot of their end users. But really right now today, our customer, our biggest market is gonna be the federal government. This is the reason why we're here. They had asked us in the [00:11:00] medical field to increase the capacity of PPE in the United States, not just for the manufacturing, but also the entire supply chain to support the manufacturing that's there.
Now, granted, we're still in the infancy of that, those stages, but to, to Donnie's point, we have a grand vision of what this place is going to look like. We had the pleasure of having you here a couple weeks ago. You saw what this facility looks like today. This is just a microcosm of what it will look like in the coming years.
But right now, the federal government is very active in supporting domestic manufacturing, especially in the medical field, medical devices which we fall under, PPE, of course, the gloves themselves. So we're talking to many different departments within the federal government that have mandates now that they are to purchase US manufactured goods.
So we've been very fortunate about to have those conversations. They're accelerating nicely. It does take time. We know how long it takes for a [00:12:00] government contract to come to fruition. We have to have patience here, but when you're producing the volume of product that we have here, we're scalable and we move quickly.
So we're producing inventory, so we've gotta find those early wins And that's what we've been doing at this point in time. So we're real excited about it. We just had the government here do an audit of our facility just the other day, so I was very pleased to see how that turned out.
Matt Horine: It's great to hear, and it's always exciting at the end of the audit, right?
You touched on something really important there. The theme that we've seen from a lot of folks is that the, uh, national industrial policy has not really aligned to the commercial world in a lot of respects, meaning in terms of speed, because speed is profit and growth. And for the government, it's about hitting the check marks and the boxes of what the requirements are, and the more you add on.
We're doing some interesting stuff, talking with folks about the regulatory environment. Hopefully, that new rule of, of thumb is for every new regulation, 10 get pulled back. Hope that's true. They maybe need to double that to 20 from what I know and understand. But an incredible market to serve because [00:13:00] healthcare is one of those markets that people don't understand what types of o- of margins they operate on.
And I think this was something maybe you and I talked about, Kevin, when we were down there at your facility. People just think big healthcare, they, that there's a lot of money involved, or insurance, or those types of things. But the volume and amount of product that's required by any healthcare system is crazy.
I, I don't remember the numbers, but we'll give you the opportunity to maybe address that.
Kevin Shutack: I'll tell you, that's a whole other podcast, right? There is significant amount of challenges that are in the healthcare market. And when you're looking at a nitrile glove, the end user still looks at us as a commodity, and that's a false flag because as we talked about earlier about the pandemic that came through and the supply chain broke down, the fact that our healthcare providers were having to reuse PPEs.
Health risks galore, cross-contamination's significant. And at that point in time, I think we changed from a commodity to a, an essential product. They couldn't get supply. Everything was being shipped overseas. I think maybe 1% of the [00:14:00] total volume of production was coming here from the United States, but that was absorbed quickly.
We're at risk now because of how we are shortsighted a lot of times. We forget where we came from, and we are repeating that now. We've had that challenge that happened just recently here in Iran with the Strait of Hormuz and the petroleum restrictions that we've had there, and which has caused a lot of challenges in our marketplace when it looked at the NBR prices that have significantly increased, up to over 300% in a very short amount of time.
There were some allocations that were put in place from our suppliers to be able to produce gloves. Now, granted, um, with our four decades worth of experience out there, we have significant relationships with our supply chain that's out there. And just like our customers are trying to have multiple sources to be able to pull from for their product, we as a manufacturer also have to do the same thing, so we have multiple resources that we do pull from.
So if we were being restricted from one of our NBR suppliers, we were able to get maybe a percentage of what our order was gonna be, but we were able to complete everything we needed [00:15:00] by buying from multiple suppliers. So supply was restricted, but we were able to secure that supply to be able to produce those gloves if in fact a, an allocation or a restriction to market actually came into place So yes, it's a very challenging market that we're working in right now, Matt, but it looks like we are working through the weeds.
We're getting a lot of the federal government to help support this. We have meetings coming up here with the government now, talking about potentially more support of domestic manufacturers, but we're gonna really need even more support from the federal government when it comes to the private healthcare industry that's out there.
You know, we've, we worked through a lot of landmines out there. There's tariffs that are on again, off again, right? As a US manufacturer, we're actually being hit by some of the raw materials that we still have to buy from overseas. So there's some real challenges that we've had, but we're maneuvering through all this.
The signaling coming from the federal government, from the White House, there's a lot of wind to our back, I believe, that we're gonna start seeing some openings for us to be able to [00:16:00] tackle that, the market we were just talking about when it comes to healthcare and the private enterprise.
Donny Chan: Just to add to what Kevin said, the signaling from the federal government in terms of the support for essential domestic industry is, is stronger than ever.
We've seen challenges, we've seen kinda the evolution, the inconsistencies in, in policies. But more so than ever, just on our observation and also through our membership, uh, through AMMA, which we are an active kinda advocate in DC as well, a lot of things seems to be coming into place more so than ever.
Uh, we, Kevin talked about the tariffs, three zero one, two thirty-two, and then of course, the CMS payment adjustment, which is under Medicaid. And also, as you saw, the, the president's recent tweet about strengthening a more consistent policy in federal procurement for domestic PPE. So we're very happy to start to see this kind of coordination on the federal government, and definitely this industry do need that signaling and that support Maxer [00:17:00] and our other counterparts in the industry, we, we took a big gamble.
We heeded the call of the federal government to set up shop. You had touched on our investment. That is private funds. It's definitely not a, a small amount, but that is our kinda commitment and our confidence in what the government asked us for, and also the vision of a resilient kinda domestic industry.
But more than that, from the public sector, we still do need a stronger signaling from the private sector as well. So it, it's come a long ways, yes, but still work to be done, for sure, to support a growth of this critical domestic industry. But we're very happy to see, uh, things that are coming together in DC.
Matt Horine: That's a really good sentiment because we get mixed signals from time to time. Reality has to set in. Everybody wants to make in America. There's a lot of challenges to doing that. Kevin touched on the tariff component of it, and not only the sectors that you guys do serve, healthcare being the primary, and the capital that it takes.
I was surprised at how much capital and infrastructure build [00:18:00] actually has to go into building a facility like this, more than anything else that I've really seen. If we can, I wanna talk a little bit about the facility and maybe get Nick in here, and we'll jump around a little bit. But, uh, I wanna take a tour of what you built.
You... It's described as a world-class automation, robotics, Industry 4.0 technology, 215 acres, million square feet. Walk us through the physical space and how the automation's meeting that, that challenge and how you're building it.
Nick Gilman: The greatest part about the facility itself is we bought the land itself.
It was already, it was undeveloped, so we built the entire land piece around what exactly we needed, what we needed it to be And that gave us a lot of room to maneuver when it came to, okay, how do we actually want to structure this? Because we're gonna have dozens of lines to actually make the gloves come over.
We need to build a massive structure itself so that we can actually put these lines in there. And the facility itself is, outside of the manufacturing, the facility itself is incredibly durable. We built it to withstand hurricanes. [00:19:00] We placed it so that it's above the flood line. Really anything that could come through to that facility, it built to withstand.
Because at the end of the day, what we're trying, what we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars in is not only a very powerful business asset, but a very powerful strategic asset to the country itself. Whereas if all the borders shut down and we can't get any more product in, you at least know that in Houston, Texas, there's still gonna be manufacturing, whether it be another epidemic, a hurricane, or something else, that facility will be running.
And when you get into the AI, prior to this, I had almost no experience with manufacturing in, in this space itself. But once I started to learn about it, and you learn how much actually goes into manufacturing something like this, and then being able to go and see that facility and how advanced it truly is, just from the AI being able to detect defects in the gloves themselves with a camera and then [00:20:00] snap it off the line before it even goes to the packaging.
It's incredible because not only is it a monumental investment, nothing's ever 100%, but it is the closest to 100% a perfect product that you can get, and it's right there in Houston, Texas. You can drive there. You can see it. You can smell the NBR in the air and actually be able to see these things.
Matt Horine: Yeah.
No, for sure. I don't know, I didn't tell the joke on the floor, and Kevin must have missed it, but I said, I was out there in the morning, I said, "I love the smell of NBR in the morning." You can definitely smell it. One of
Kevin Shutack: my favorite lines.
Matt Horine: Yes, sir. Yeah, I don't know. We're on the, we're all on the same page there.
I was waiting to use that one and saved it for the show. But the facility itself is amazing, and hard... If you've lived in Houston long enough, you know that power, hurricanes, all of those things, so, 'cause build the suit in Brazoria County is a huge deal, and we'll get more into workforce. But let's talk a little bit, too, because you mentioned it, the process of making the glove and how much volume.
I don't know if folks who are listening understand how much volume is going through the facility, and I cited a number there at the beginning, but please feel free to correct me. But how does that process work, and [00:21:00] why is it so intricate for what you said people, for some reason, view as a commodity? It's not a commodity.
It's something that's a critical piece of infrastructure at this point.
Nick Gilman: One of the biggest things too is it's like a lot of different things in where when you have it, you never think twice about it, but when you don't have it, suddenly everything seems to stop. And if you're a hospital, you're a frontline worker in a hospital during a pandemic, and they're telling you, "Hey, we can't get you any more product to protect yourselves," whether that be gloves, masks, or surgical gowns, that's a huge thing.
And Kevin was mentioning, like, all the different industries. You've got everything from automotive to tattoo, where they all utilize these nitrile gloves in everyday business practice. When you take that away, the whole thing seems to come to a standstill, and employers and businesses have to ask the question like, "What do we do?"
And with that being said, the United States uses, domestically, approximately [00:22:00] 120 billion gloves a year. At max capacity for our facility, we will be able to supply 19 billion of that 120 billion Right now, we're journey- we're turning around anywhere from 180 to 200 million gloves given if they're running at 80% threshold or they ramp it up.
We've got plans for our phase one, should be complete relatively soon. Block A will have 10 lines in there, and we'll be making anywhere from 200 to 220 million. Each line itself is about six stories tall, hundreds of feet long, and they're making 2,200 gloves every 45 minutes, which when you think about it, this factory runs 24/7, so that's all month long other than their, their monthly services.
But the scale of that is incredible when you think about it because a lot of people can't really relate to when they hear the number a billion, and then you find out that this facility, only in phase one of manufacturing, is [00:23:00] already producing that a year.
Kevin Shutack: Yeah, one of the benefits we have here is that we've been doing this for almost four decades.
This is not the very first factory that's been built here. I think Donnie mentioned this is our 18th factory. You learn a lot over those years, right? Uh, in, in, in this industry, here in the US, there were probably 10 or 11 different companies that tried this earlier. There is a high failure rate to this manufacturing process.
There are so many different things that we could talk about and why some companies are successful and others are failures, right? They're all great case studies, and we've learned from all of this. But at the same time, we come here with decades worth of experience. We've got the know-how. We bring in some of the best minds of the industry that have been doing this for a long time.
They could come here and lay out the manufacturing facility to take a look and see what the best possible way is to run these manufacturing lines. Some of our lines here have double the speed of what other manufacturers here in the United States. As Nick mentioned a moment ago, 20-plus million units per month per line.
That is [00:24:00] a high-capacity machine. All of these are fully automated too, by the way, and I think one thing that's really important, but it's be- beyond just the AI, 'cause that is the future of the technologies that's there, detects all these, uh, products that might have some deformities, which is very few, by the way.
But when they do find them, they pull 'em off, right? But this is highly automated. The very first person to touch this glove is gonna be the end user. Nobody on our line touches this from the moment that the glove is dipped all the way to where it's boxed We have a number of people that actually are, are monitoring the systems.
This goes back to your labor question a moment ago. We don't necessarily have physical labor on those lines. We have labor that's monitoring the systems and making sure that everything is run smoothly. Quality departments that are constantly checking the quality of the product to make sure that it's meeting our specifications, the AQL levels that's necessary to meet our 510.
The quality of the glove is going to be what I will say is best in class because of our experience of what we've been [00:25:00] able to do here. And there's a lot of trials and tribulations that go when you first start up. We've learned that lesson time and time again. And even after all these decades of doing this, I still think we probably could have made a few different changes that are up.
That's just the way things work in engineering processes But here's what's nice about this. W- this is phase one that you saw. We've got three other phases that are coming up. You don't think that we're gonna be able to improve on what we've already got here? Absolutely we're going to, which is gonna make us even faster, more efficient, and more effective.
Matt Horine: As the facility, it's impressive in a lot of ways. One of the most impressive parts about it for me was your focus on the water consumption because I think you've driven through... I'm from Texas, and everybody here has been there. You look at a lot of small towns and infrastructure, they might be nervous about things like this.
We hear a lot of talk right now about data centers and water usage and those types of things. I'll-- That's-- I'll drag that out in another show, but what you guys did was really innovative. It's an incredible process because the ability to reuse that and do all of that is very environmentally [00:26:00] sound. It's something that probably puts the reshoring effort on good footing- Mm-hmm
to make sure that you have that critical supply chain, kind of all those components of it built into the process. Let's shift again a little bit to the commercial side and some of the development there. Goal right now of probably serving potentially up to 20%-ish of the US domestic market. With that goal, it seems very realistic because I think it's a competitive edge to make it here, and maybe there will be more demand, not just from the federal government, but the healthcare system as well.
How do you build trust with buyers who've historically relied on imports, or that they're just casing this as a commodity still, or if they've reverted to that? Because that's, that sounds like the unique approach that you're taking, if I'm hearing it right.
Kevin Shutack: Yeah. G- A, a great question, and this is a c- a conversation I have multiple times a day, Matt, as, as you would expect.
Fir- first and foremost, you've gotta have a quality product to be able to meet the customer's expectations. If you don't meet the quality, you're not in the running anyway for any other further conversations. You're not gonna win on [00:27:00] price, all right? We know that's the way it is when it comes to domestic manufacturing versus imported goods.
Now, there's a lot of shifting sands on how pricing is actually navigated these days, right? We also talked about the potential tariff 232301. We talked about the potential CMS reimbursement rates that are there. That's also gonna be a game changer when it comes to the healthcare side. So what is it that we do today?
We've gotta bring some value adds beyond just the cost of doing business, and I think when you look at this, you, you find that we have speed to market. We have current inventory. When we have a customer that's asking how quickly they can receive some product, we have inventory on the floor right now that we can actually turn it around within 24 to 48 hours.
It'll be on a truck and anywhere in the country, since we are strategically located in Houston right outside of I-20, we can be on the East or West Coast within two to three days. That is one of the value adds that we bring And on top of that, we have multiple product lines that [00:28:00] we have available to the
customer.
It's not just one product. We've got different specs because each spec has a different utilization. You have a thinner medical-grade glove, okay? We've talked about that in the hospitals. And you have thicker gloves that are utilized in the MROs or in other, uh, manufacturing facilities. We have those gloves that are currently available right now that we'll be able to turn quickly to get to that product or to the end users.
And on top of that, we mentioned the quality. Some of the best-made gloves are coming from Malaysia. That's pretty well known in the marketplace. But when you look at where our history has been from, our DNA as far as our folks that make the gloves here, come from that background. And so the gloves that have been known to be best in the marketplace, we're actually, uh, producing right here in, in Houston.
So quality, speed, at a reasonable price. We're not, never gonna be able to say that we can match an imported product, and one of the challenges that, that I have here, Matt, is that I've got a lot of companies that are very interested in [00:29:00] buying US product, carrying the flag all the way up to they come to the negotiation table, and then they ask us to match foreign product prices.
Okay? So there's a disconnect that's there. So we have to be able to bring other value beyond just that, just the actual purchasing price on the product.
Matt Horine: That is an interesting dynamic. When it is time to purchase or it is time to make a buying decision, people understand, as a consumer, I, as a consumer, I'm somebody who would be individually willing to pay more or premium for something that is made in America on the box, right?
Organizational and institutional want to do that for the good news story and maybe because they want to do the right thing from our perspective, but they are so cost centric and focused on that that maybe it does take a little bit more investment. It's gonna take a period of adjustment over time for people to get used to, A, there is a premium on this.
We're bringing that onshore and closer to the end use consumer and something that's maybe not been historically done. Thinking a little bit next steps long term, what are some of the exciting things coming up for y'all as you begin to build out the next phase? [00:30:00] What's next? Because you've certainly got a great foothold and a great story out the gate here.
Kevin Shutack: Uh, we have a vision here that is really starting to take hold. This conversation that we've had, been having for the last 45 minutes to an hour has been going on for years for us to be able to get to this point. We're getting some traction out there, and I'm very excited to see this. And it's not just with us.
It's with our, our brethren out there in all glove manufacturing Donnie was mentioning earlier about AMMA, which is a very important organization that we belong to. It's a support group. It helps us to be able to work together as a American medical manufacturing, and also is a voice in, in Washington, DC for us.
So we want nothing but success for all of the folks that are making gloves here in the United States. We need more capacity here. We've had a couple of false starts along the way over the years, and that's gonna happen. Attrition does happen. This is a very difficult market to break into when it's been dominated the way that it has for many [00:31:00] decades coming from the Far East.
We're making a foothold here. Our competitors, we'll call them competitors, but they're the brothers of ours out there today, they're making some good strides as well. They're picking up contracts and they're delivering. We also are later to the game since we're the last to join this market as a US manufacturer, but we are gaining rapid speed 'cause you saw our facility here.
You see what our capabilities are, and you see what our scalability is as well. When we're talking to very large end users, these could be some of the largest medical distributors in the country. These might be some of the largest end users, whether it be government or it might be a, a manufacturer of some sort.
They visit our factory. They see what our skill sets are. They see what our ability to be able to meet the demand of what they're looking for. We're doing a lot of private label these days as well. Heck, we're even in the retail market, and that is great exposure for us because that's some shelf space there that we [00:32:00] can market as Maxter product that is visible to the open public So we are on the precipice of getting some much larger contracts.
And what I like about this too, I think is also important, is this, these are just not spot buys. Some of our customers we're talking to are looking long-term with us. They want security. It's not just about a price point. They wanna make sure that their supply chain is secure over a period of time. We're talking minimum three years.
We're talking five-year contracts. We're actually talking 10-year contracts, and I think that's the signaling that the federal government also is stating. They, they recognize they can't just go out there and send a purchase order to a US manufacturer and then wait another six months, nine months, a year to send another purchase order, because those companies may not be around at that time.
But having a secure contract, long-term contract that will be able to support our supply chain, to be able to support employees here as well, so they see a future with this organization as well. That is the type of [00:33:00] success that we are starting to see. We believe that it's imminent, and we're already starting to produce for some of these end users.
That's going to bring us to that next phase where we're gonna not just have 18 or 20 manufacturing lines on this first phase, but we're gonna do another 20 manufacturing line in the coming years. And then on phase three, we'll do another 20 manufacturing lines. I think that I shared this with you. We possibly can have up to 80 production lines.
It could be 75, it could be 80, whatever that looks like. We want to be the dominant player in the United States when it comes to production of nitrile gloves. And I was thinking about this earlier this morning, and you guys kind of were talking about this, how this product is basically everywhere you look these days.
Just for fun, tomorrow when you go to work and by the end of the day, count how many times you might see somebody wearing a glove, a disposable glove. It could be happening at a gas station, it could be at a restaurant, it could be working in a manufacturing facility or at a, at a retail shop They are everywhere.[00:34:00]
And our opportunity here by y- and you giving us the platform here to be able to share our message is extremely important to us because our job now is to showcase what we've been working on so hard for these number of years. It's go time for us. We're not just building out a manufacturing facility.
We're g- we're in the commercial stage now. We are active, and we are ready to be able to meet the demand that's currently out there and for the future.
Nick Gilman: Piggyback off of what Kevin was saying, is we're already in another situation where we're s- seeing shortages occurring. With the Strait of Hormuz being closed and the cost of shipping going up dramatically, like, we've seen historic rises in prices from what originally would cost $30 from a factory is now costing you anywhere from 50 to $60.
And that massive price change, that, that's enough to cause some, a huge shift on someone's balance sheet or their profit and loss statement. And now that you have a facility down here in Houston that... Well, 'cause we, [00:35:00] everybody always goes down to cost. "Oh, it's a higher cost per unit." But price volatility, those lead times, those decreased shipping costs, all those things factor into that item, and it comes to, it really brings us to the point of like, what are you willing to do to insulate yourself to this type of fluctuation?
And you've got this facility that's built there, and we're like, "Here it is. Here's your solution. You pay a slightly higher cost now as opposed to seeing a 30 to 50% increase in your cost Later on, and it's, it may not even be from your base cost, it may be just to put it on a boat and have it sent over here.
And that's where the, that we're caught in that moment right there. And the Strait being clo- being, the Strait being closed has been just another reminder to these end users that, hey, this is something that you have to do to insulate yourself, protect yourself, and prepare for the future. Because it's not a matter of if another event like this is going to occur, it's al- it's just a matter of when it's going to happen, and what you did in that lead-up to that to [00:36:00] protect yourself.
Matt Horine: Spot on, on a lot of that. You said something there, too. I don't think you can really put a price on peace of mind, Kevin, which you highlighted there, is they want stability. People want long-term protection, or at least the peace of mind to do that. And when you said that, Nick, about it's the Strait of Hormuz today, I remember back in, gosh, I don't even remember what year it was, but the ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal.
Just things that you cannot predict. You, you can't sit here and think a year or two years out. S- situations that are going on in, in Taiwan or wherever the next potential hotspot is, is something that no one can predict, and, but having that peace of mind is so critical.
Kevin Shutack: And that's one thing that we do here, is that we're the market's barometer, okay?
We have the opportunity to foresee some things we can anticipate. And where others can be caught short-handed, especially if you're a distributor or an end user and you're late to the game 'cause you're focusing on other things, because our end users do buy other products out there, right? They don't just focus on what we do here.
Leave that to us. [00:37:00] Let us be your expert when it comes to that. Let us anticipate it. Let us be able to be the forecaster that can be able to circumnavigate any challenges that are gonna come there. Nick, Nick is absolutely right. Just in the last so many years, how many times has there been a disruption in the supply chain?
It could be weather related. L- let's talk about the supply chain that happened from a hurricane a couple years ago where the, I believe it was the IV Solutions manufacturing facility that was taken offline due to a hurricane And there were no backups, and that created a significant problem in the medical field.
We have to find ways to be able to risk mitigate that from happening again, and that's what we're here for.
And
Nick Gilman: another keen example of that has actually happened since the strait has been closed. A lot of major distributors put a lot of hospital networks on allocations, and unfortunately, some of those smaller networks that didn't purchase as much, they were given an allocation, and it wasn't-- it may have only been what, fifty percent of what they actually needed per month.
I had gotten three phone calls from [00:38:00] smaller networks, maybe five or six hospitals or med- medical facilities, and they essentially explained to me that every month they always relied on, that every month they'd get their order, and it would be just what they needed for that month, and then they called, and they're like, "What, what do we have to do?
Can we get set up with this?" And they explained these difficulties, and I was like, "If you have to... the procurement specialist for that specific hospital has to call the manufacturer themselves to be like, 'Hey, do you have anything that you can give us?' That's not a, that's not a good conversation to have."
And thankfully, though, we're in a position where, like, it was not nearly as dire as w- what it eventually could end up being, and we could help. But that's just another example of the lack of awareness and planning and foresight to be able to see these events coming, and those just-in-time purchases, that regular what I need for the month, it's not good to, to do when anything can happen at any single moment, whether, like Kevin said, a hurricane, a pandemic.
Like, we had the [00:39:00] Andes virus little scare there from the cruise ship. The whispers from that was tremendous, and Donny and I were wa- watching
Matt Horine: that
Nick Gilman: every hour on the updates for what was going on because we're like, "How long is it gonna take for us to start getting phone calls
Matt Horine: about this?" And o- old sentiments start to kick in.
That's a big lesson learned, right? And I think one of the things that really stands out is that you're thinking ahead on the commercial, not only opportunity, but why it's so critical, and it never ceases to amaze me sometimes from the procurement department, people have this Amazon-type mindset where I could just order them or pull them off the shelf.
I'm trying to avoid that. I don't want any packages on my front door when I get home. I don't know about you guys, but the surprise shipments of overnight stuff, and it's the-- we, we're all used to in our everyday lives, but it doesn't work that way in the real world. Final two questions here. One, this is for anybody thinking about bringing it back, building it here in America.
What would be the key piece of advice you would provide them? And I know this, you guys [00:40:00] are a really unique example because of the capital-intensive nature of your business and all the other factors that go into this, but what would be an advice to them if anybody's still on the fence in twenty twenty-six?
I don't know if there are many, but if there is anything that you guys have insight that way.
Nick Gilman: Maxter is, like Donny said, the face of onshoring, but it shows that even a company like ours can be faced with difficulties Be patient, trust your process, and stay committed to the cause. Because at the end of the day, you're not just fighting to bring your business back to the United States, you're bringing something that actually benefits the country back.
And if you have to sacrifice in the process of doing that, then at the end of the day, it's worth it because you're bringing that back to the United States. You're bringing back jobs, you're bringing back livelihood. In our instance, we're bringing jobs, we're bringing training, we're bringing, protecting America itself.
Everything from pharmaceutical companies to medical PPE, to maybe auto- automotive manufacturing. You're changing lives. And when you're [00:41:00] faced with those difficulties, you wanna stay committed to it because at the end of the day, you're making people's lives better. Whether it's medical manufacturing, you're protecting Americans, or automotive and you're providing people with transportation, or you're giving people jobs, these are all things that e- not just businessmen care about, but everyday citizens.
Kevin Shutack: I think perseverance is just so key to this because there's so many times that you can just say, "Hey, this is bigger than me," and some people can walk away, and it's... You just can't do that. You gotta know what your mission is. What are you here for? We're here to make sure that our healthcare professionals are secured with their PPE.
They cannot be at risk like they were in previous times. There's a, a reliability on us to make sure that we're there to be able to make sure those that need us will get the product, and that's something that has not always been to that case. There's a lot of challenges, there's a lot of headwinds, but at the same time, through that perseverance that we keep talking about here, you'll find your wins, and those wins will continue to [00:42:00] catapult you onto that next win.
And over time, you'll start finding that success, and it's quite rewarding. But doggone it, you go from hero to zero real fast in this business, right? But at the same time, you keep pushing and that... You're gonna win because it's, you're doing the right things.
Matt Horine: We'll be very excited to follow along with that journey because you guys are doing something so critical and so important, not only for American manufacturing, but the country in general.
If our listeners wanted to go, if they wanna become a customer of Maxter Healthcare or talk about how you guys did it, where can they go to find out more about you?
Kevin Shutack: Our website is maxtergloves.com, M-A-X-T-E-R-G-L-O-V-E-S.com. We are also in the process of designing an e-commerce on our website as well, so we'll have the opportunity to be able to receive purchases online, and I think we're just a couple of weeks away from that happening.
And then of course, the direct line could be 1-132821140.
Matt Horine: Excellent. That's a direct line. We'll take [00:43:00] that and we'll be sure to, we'll be sure to link everything else in the comments. But Kevin, Donny, Nick, thank you all very much.
Kevin Shutack: It's been a pleasure, Matt. Absolutely. Thank, thanks for the opportunity.
Matt Horine: The story of Maxter Healthcare is the story of American manufacturing at an inflection point. It's about the convergence of strategic necessity, market opportunity, and technological capability, and what it looks like when a global company decides to bet big on the United States. Maxter is executing on that opportunity, and the ambition to become the largest nitrile glove manufacturer in America is well underway, and that's the future they're building in Brazoria County right here in Texas.
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