LIMA, Ohio - America's growing penchant for liquid laundry suds and fragrant fabric softeners is far from a washout in Lima, Ohio.

The nation's sole source of top-selling Tide and other liquid laundry detergents until this year and only manufacturer of Downy and Gain liquid fabric softeners is Procter & Gamble Co.'s factory east of Lima.

The plant has captured more than $76 million in investment in the last two years and added 100 employees. The added equipment and employees are just the latest in a string of investments at the factory opened 37 years ago, which got into laundry detergents in the 1970s and introduced liquid Tide in 1984. The plant has 450 employees, making about $25 each, and 300 contract workers.

As Americans began shifting from powder to liquid laundry detergent in the 1990s, with fluid surpassing powder late in the decade, more capacity has been added in Lima. Plus, the Cincinnati company decided three years ago to add liquid detergent to a 300-employee Louisiana powder detergent plant, which is ramping up that production this year, officials said.

"The growth here has been significant," said Todd Hoffman, manager of the Allen County factory. Employees have done an impressive job keeping up with changes, he said. "It's a good problem we have growing the business, but it has some difficult challenges."

Every day, about 1,000 semi-trucks go in and out of the continuously operating factory, delivering raw materials, bottles, and cartons and shipping out various products to stores and distributors.

It supplies liquid laundry detergents under the Tide, Gain, Cheer, Era, Dreft, Ivory Snow, Ace, and Ariel brand names as well as Downy and Gain liquid fabric softeners throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

Liquid Tide certainly is big item for Procter & Gamble, Ohio's third largest company with $51 billion in revenues last year.

Overall, Tide is the company's second-largest brand, and it along with Downy and Ariel - an overseas detergent brand - are among the company's 16 brands with more than $1 billion in annual sales.

The firm's products, led by Tide, dominate both liquid and powder laundry detergent categories nationwide, statistics show. Last year, Americans bought more than $2.4 billion worth of liquid laundry detergent, a 1 percent increase, while they bought less than $828 million worth of powder detergent, a more than 11 percent drop, according to Information Resources Inc. of Chicago. (Sales from Wal-Mart are not included.)

Americans last year spent nearly $938 million on Tide liquid laundry detergent, accounting for more than 38 percent of the market, Information Resources said. Gain was the fourth-best selling liquid brand at $171 million, while Cheer was No. 7 at $120 million, and Era was No. 9 at $83 million.

The last decade, new products and different bottle sizes grew the complexity of the Lima plant, which has more than 13 acres of floor space under roof, Mr. Gordon said. Procter & Gamble, for example, began making Gain fabric softener two years, and in the last year added Tide with Downy and Tide Coldwater.

Another successful product produced last fall has been Downy Simple Pleasures, which has vanilla, lavender, and other scents, Mr. Gordon said.

To make production as streamlined as possible, some detergent and softener bottles are filled with liquid without ever leaving their case, Mr. Gordon said. Once delivered to the plant, cases of empty bottles are taken directly to production lines, where they are filled and moved to the warehouse for five to seven days on average before being shipped out, the company's version of just-in-time delivery, he said.

"We try to respond to orders, not to forecasts," the manager said.

Contact Julie M. McKinnon at:

jmckinnon@theblade.com

or 419-724-6087.

First Published July 5, 2005, 11:51 a.m.