FERRIDAY — Louisiana Elastomer has hired approximately 25 employees, and plans to continue hiring, LAEL President and CEO Mike Wells said.

Wells was the guest speaker at the Ferriday Rotary Club Thursday, and he told Rotarians that the company plans to have a workforce of between 50 and 70 employees by the end of the year.

“As our volumes ramp up, we will continue to ramp up our workforce,” Wells said.

The goal for the company is to hire a total workforce of 135 over the next four years, Wells said.

LAEL began operations in March at their new 50,000-squre foot plant in Vidalia, a $14 million investment that was the first to be located in the second Vidalia industrial.

The plant uses a special process to recycle tires that starts with separating the different types of rubber in a tire rather than grinding the entire tire.

“If you grind a tire, you have messed up, because you have four families of rubber in there,” Wells said.

The zero emissions, no effluent process at the LAEL plant can render recycled rubber to a virgin polymer equivalent, but priced below the lowest market value, he said.

“We are polymer chemists, not tire grinders,” Wells said. “We are making a sophisticated, engineered product.”

The amount of recycled rubber that can be blended into new rubber was previously capped at 5 percent, but Wells said the LAEL process can generate blends of up to 90 percent recycled rubber, depending on the product.

“We can send our product to China from Vidalia, through the port of New Orleans, cheaper than they can buy from the local rubber company,” he said.

Those seeking employment at LAEL should apply through the Louisiana Workforce office in Ferriday.