A year ago this week, the Clinton County Industrial Development Authority approved the lease of a building at the Industrial Park to Sun Fiberglass Products, Inc.

Now, the company from Brooksville, Fla. has started its 16m pool at its Clinton County facility.

"We have the capabilities of doing five or six times what we arc doing now," Curt Prystupa, founder of Sun Fiberglass Products, Inc. said. "We just shipped a load last week to the upper peninsulas in Michigan. We have also picked up a few new accounts in the area."

Sun Fiberglass Products Inc. began operations in 1994 and produced its ' first pool in 1995. The company offers several different models 01 pools and manufacture about a third of its product line at the Clinton County plant located in the Industrial Park on Ky. 90.

The transition from making pools in Florida to producing them in Kentucky was easy, according to Prystupa. He said several workers agreed to relocate to Clinton County to help train and work in the local plant.

"We love it up here," said Sun Fiberglass employee Tom Bagwell, who is just one of the employees who relocated from Florida.

Bagwell and his wife, Lynette, made the transition from Florida. Also an employee at the local pool manufacturer, she agrees with her husband that working conditions are much better in Kentucky.

"Down there, (Florida) we would have to go outside just to cool down, Lynette Bagwell said. "Ninety degrees is much cooler up here than it is in Florida," Tom Bagwell added.

Other than building pools, Prystupa said he is always looking for ways to help the area children when it comes to community support and projects.

"One year in Florida we donated about 500 backpacks to local schools," Prystupa said. "We are all about the kids here at Sun Fiberglass."

Prystupa's operation in Florida employes around 80 people and has been in production for around 13 years. More than 1,000 pools are completed at the Florida plant.

Prystupa hopes to produce around 2,000 units a year when the Albany plant is kicked into high gear. He said he wanted to give the employees time to settle into their jobs so they can be more comfortable at it.

"In the spring we will probably be adding about six or seven more people for production," Prystupa said. Right now we have 15 full time employees, so we hope to have more in the spring. What we didn't want to do in the beginning was over hire and then have to cut back hours. We wanted to try and keep them around 40 hours a week."

Sun Fiberglass Products Inc., is completing local operations inside a 27,000 square-foot building and the building is situated on approximately nine acres of land.

The original arrangement with the Industrial Development Authority was to lease the property as a lease-to-own agreement for a 15 year, $325,000 deal.

The building itself is equipped with office spaces and a show room in the entrance with the production line in the rear of the building.

"I think we ran something like 400 cubic yards of concrete and more than three miles of wiring and conduit throughout the building," Prystupa said.

What looks like a lot of unused space now will be beneficial in the future when the production line grows.

"We won't be at full capacity until around 2009 or 2010, but we will have everything we need here to crank it up when we are ready," Prystupa said. "At the time when we decided to come up here, the dynamics in the economy were different. We have scaled back a little from our initial plans, but we are very pleased with the outcome. Our customers are very pleased with our production here because we were able to become more competitive with our shipping cost."

Prystupa said shipping was the main reason why Clinton County will be manufacturing most of the larger pools.

"Down in Florida, their yards are too small for the big pools," Prystupa said. "Up here we can pay almost seven dollars a mile but we are 700 miles closer to our shipping destination."

The process of producing a fiberglass pool is not a very lengthy process, but is a demanding one.

The first thing you need is a mold.

After the mold is secured, it is swept to ensure no dirt is attached to the outside of the mold. The interior surface of the mold is sprayed, then applied with a special resin, which is a modified epoxy. The epoxy gives the surface some strength and moisture resistance.

Sheets of saturated fabric are laid down with a spray gun next and more are put into place by hand over the mold. Workers then roll the fabric with a bristle roller to push out the air, allowing all the layers to tighten and bond together.

After me shell has hardened, a crane is used to lift the shell off the mold. It is then taken outside and trimmed, buffed and tile is placed inside the pool for a decorative touch.

After the tile work is finished and the product goes through an inspection, then it is ready to ship to the customer.

"The customers pay a lot of money for our product so we want to give them the very best when they get their pool," Prystupa said.