There was a lot of echoing noise, and a lot of rubble piled in one of the cavernous back rooms at Fuller Industries Inc. west of Great Bend last Friday.

Company employees had spent the last couple of days demolishing a wall in the chamber to make room for new machinery and equipment coming to Fuller from a sister plant in Canada. Two new garage-door-sized openings allow access to existing production areas.

All the items produced at the Canadian facility, also owned by Fuller’s parent company GDI, are now made here, said Joe Mann, Fuller vice president and general manager. While the plant covers 600,000 square feet, renovations to some areas are needed to make the space more usable.

“We have a tremendous building out here with a lot of potential,” he said. “And as the needs of manufacturing change, it gives us the flexibility to change with it.”

The addition of the lines from north of the border add more than 200 new items to Fuller’s portfolio, Mann said, and although the products are focused on dish soap, laundry detergent, and commercial cleaning chemicals, “this consolidation helps us expand into new regions of North America and adds new customers.”

But all of this takes planning and a retooling of the structure. Last week’s effort was a part of that.

Deftly piloting a mini skid-steer loader last week, Fuller’s Facilities Manager Rick Zimmerman cleared the debris caused by the work. As he worked, more crumbled cinder blocks tumbled onto the heap.

“This is a huge opportunity for us,” Mann said. “Not only are we growing what we can offer to our customers, but we are growing our number of customers.”

There is another side to it as well.

“This also puts us in a position to continue to expand our workforce,” he said. Now, they are hiring not only more production line employees but also more specialized positions like chemistry technicians and robotics operators.

The new production lines will be up and running by the end of November, Mann said.