Peak Nano will expand production of its NanoPlex HDC capacitor film twenty-fold at its Macedonia facility, the company announced Tuesday, Nov. 10, in a release distributed by PR Newswire, moving an Ohio-invented material from early production to full commercial scale.
A new Davis-Standard cast film line will add up to three million pounds of annual capacity, Peak Nano said in the announcement, serving the power grid, AI data centers, fusion energy, industrial power and defense when it reaches full production in the first quarter of 2028. The company put the total investment at $20 million in equipment, facilities and staffing.
Capacitors store and release an electric field, and the thin film inside them is a quiet bottleneck in everything from grid equipment to data centers. Peak Nano said in the announcement that its nanolayer film, engineered from multiple polymers at the nanoscale, is designed to store more energy, run cooler and last longer than conventional single-polymer films, and that it can drop into existing capacitor designs.
“We have breakthrough technology. Now we’re building the capacity to let the world see it,” Peak Nano CEO Jim Welsh said in the announcement. “Northeast Ohio has been building America’s polymer industry for more than a century. Expanding NanoPlex production 20-fold in Macedonia is new growth for Ohio.”
The technology’s roots are in Cleveland. NanoPlex grew out of nanolayer polymer research at Case Western Reserve University, developed with the university, DARPA and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, according to the announcement, and the company said it is the only U.S. manufacturer of nanolayer dielectric film. U.S. production of conventional polypropylene capacitor film ended in 2013, the company said, leaving capacitor makers dependent on overseas suppliers.
Demand is the backdrop. The announcement cited U.S. Energy Information Administration figures putting U.S. electricity use on track for a record in 2026, driven largely by data centers, and Electric Power Research Institute projections that data centers could use 9% to 17% of U.S. electricity by 2030. It is the same build-out reshaping Ohio’s own power planning, from statewide business expansion to the AI workforce training that opened this week in Toledo.
“Peak Nano is a leader in advanced polymers, and this expansion shows what Ohio’s workforce can build,” U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce said in the announcement, adding that he has supported federal investment in critical materials technology. NEO-SMART CEO Nick Barendt, also quoted in the announcement, called the expansion a Case Western Reserve discovery scaled into a production line in Macedonia.
The hiring starts before the line does. Peak Nano will host a job fair Saturday, Nov. 21, from 9 a.m. to noon at its Valley View facility, 7700 Hub Parkway, Suite 8, to fill more than 15 immediate openings for extrusion and inspection technicians across all three shifts, the announcement said, with on-site interviews, plant tours and training provided, and further expansion planned in 2027.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
Confirmed from the announcement: the 20-fold expansion, the three-million-pound capacity figure, the $20 million investment, the first-quarter 2028 full-production target and the Nov. 21 job fair. Still to come: a construction and installation timeline for the new line in Macedonia, and how many of the planned 2027 jobs will sit at the Macedonia site itself rather than Valley View.
The new line will produce mono-, multi- and nanolayered films, scaling up from the Davis-Standard cast nanolayer line Peak Nano commissioned in 2022, according to the announcement. Davis-Standard’s Christian Renners, quoted in the announcement, called the system a first-of-a-kind full-scale production line built for nanolayered films for dielectrics, medical and food applications, the product of a partnership running since that 2022 commissioning.
Peak Nano, founded in 2016, said in the announcement that its technology is protected by more than 20 global patents, produced under ISO 9001 certification with in-line inspection and lot traceability, and engineered entirely in the United States with a supply chain sourced from allied nations. The company also works through the Polymer Industry Cluster powered by the Greater Akron Chamber and is an industry partner in NEO-SMART, the Case Western Reserve-led coalition of more than 70 regional manufacturers and institutions backed by the National Science Foundation, according to the announcement.
What happens next is the Nov. 21 job fair, where the first technicians for the scale-up will be hired and trained well ahead of the line’s 2028 debut — an early test of how fast Northeast Ohio’s polymer workforce can staff a technology its own university labs created.