Encore Wire Corporation is a Delaware corporation, incorporated in 1989, with
its principal executive office and manufacturing plants located at 1329 Millwood
Road, McKinney, Texas 75069. The Company’s telephone number is (972) 562-9473.
Encore is a low-cost manufacturer of electrical building wire and cable. The
Company is a significant supplier of building wire for interior electrical wiring
in commercial and industrial buildings, homes, apartments, and manufactured
housing.
The principal customers for Encore’s wire are wholesale electrical distributors,
who sell building wire and a variety of other products to electrical contractors.
The Company sells its products primarily through independent manufacturers’
representatives located throughout the United States and, to a lesser extent,
through its own direct in-house marketing efforts.
Encore’s strategy is to further expand its share of the building wire
market primarily by emphasizing a high level of customer service and the addition
of new products that complement its current product line, while maintaining
and enhancing its low-cost production capabilities. Encore’s low-cost
production capability features an efficient plant design incorporating highly
automated manufacturing equipment, an integrated production process and a highly-motivated
work force.
Customer Service: Encore is highly focused on responding to customer needs,
with an emphasis on building and maintaining strong customer relationships.
Encore seeks to establish customer loyalty by achieving a high order fill rate
and rapidly handling customer orders, shipments, inquiries and returns. The
Company maintains product inventories sufficient to meet anticipated customer
demand and believes that the speed and completeness with which it fills orders
are key competitive advantages critical to marketing its products.
Product Innovation: Encore has been a leader in bringing new ideas to a commodity
product. Encore pioneered the widespread use of color feeder sizes of commercial
wire and colors in the residential non-metallic cable. The colors have improved
on-the-job safety and reduced installation times for contractors. Encore Wire’s
patented SmartColor ID® system for metal-clad and armor-clad cables allows
for quick and accurate identification of gauge, number of conductors, wire and
jacket type. Additionally, Encore currently has nineteen patents and twenty-nine
patent-pending innovations that range from process improvements to packaging
solutions.
Low-Cost Production: Encore’s low-cost production capability features
an efficient plant design and an incentivized work force.
Efficient Plant Design: Encore’s highly automated wire manufacturing equipment
is integrated in an efficient design that reduces material handling, labor and
in-process inventory.
Incentivized Work Force: The Company has a stock option plan and a stock appreciation
rights plan that enhance the motivation of its salaried manufacturing supervisors.
The Company also has a comprehensive safety program that emphasizes employee
participation. The Company provides a 401(k) retirement savings plan to all
employees.
The efficiency of Encore’s highly automated manufacturing facility is
a key element of its low-cost production capability. Encore’s residential
wire manufacturing lines have been integrated so that the handling of product
is substantially reduced throughout the production process.
The manufacturing process for the Company’s various products involves
multiple steps, including: casting, drawing, stranding, compounding, insulating,
cabling, jacketing and armoring.
Casting: Rod is produced by melting sheets of copper cathode and copper scrap,
casting the molten copper into a bar and rolling the hot copper bar into a 5/16
inch copper rod to be drawn into copper wire.
Drawing: Drawing is the process of reducing 5/16 inch copper rod through converging
dies until the specified wire diameter is attained. The wire is then heated
with electrical current to soften or “anneal” the wire to make it
easier to handle.
Stranding: Stranding is the process of twisting together from seven to sixty-one
individual bare wire strands to form a single cable. The purpose of stranding
is to improve the flexibility of wire while maintaining its electrical current
carrying capacity.
PVC Compounding: PVC compounding is the process of mixing the various raw materials
that are required to produce the PVC necessary to meet specifications of Underwriters
Laboratories, Inc. (“UL”) for the insulation and jacket requirements
for the wire that is manufactured.
Insulating: Insulating is the process of extruding PVC over the solid or stranded
wire.
Cabling: Cabling is the process of twisting together two or more insulated conductors
to form a cable.
Jacketing: Jacketing is the process of extruding PVC over two or more insulated
conductor wires, with or without an uninsulated ground wire, to form a finished
product. The Company’s jacketing lines are integrated with packaging lines
that cut the wire and coil it onto reels or package it in boxes or shrink-wrap.
Jacketing also comprises extruding a nylon covering over some PVC-insulated
products, such as THHN/THWN-2.
Metal-Cladding and Armoring: Metal-cladding and armoring is the process of covering
two or more insulated conductor wires, with or without an uninsulated ground
wire, with a spiral interlocking cover of aluminum or steel to form a finished
product.
Encore manufactures and tests all of its products in accordance with the Underwriters
Laboratories (UL) standards, a nationally recognized testing and standards agency.
Encore’s machine operators and quality control inspectors conduct routine
product inspections. The Company tests finished products for electrical continuity
to ensure compliance with its own quality standards and those of UL. Encore’s
manufacturing lines are equipped with laser micrometers to measure wire diameter
and insulation thickness while the lines are in operation. During each shift,
operators perform and record routine physical measurements of products, all
of which are separately verified and approved by quality control inspectors.
Although suppliers pre-test PVC and nylon compounds, the Company tests products
for aging, cracking and brittleness of insulation and jacketing. Additionally,
UL representatives routinely visit and test products from each area of manufacturing.
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