There is some exciting news to share from Clearfield, and they could not wait to spread the word: they just completed a new 100K square foot facility for warehouse and logistics space in Brooklyn Park just down the road from their headquarters.
This facility will support multi-state regional telco providers and operators. To shed light on this project and how it reflects significant shifts in the fiber market, Kevin Morgan, Chief Marketing Officer at Clearfield, joined Daniel J. Litwin on this latest episode of Better Broadband.
This facility fits in with Clearfield’s multi-year plan to provide a platform to support the fiber deployments the industry expects over the course of the next decade. “The company’s been built to simultaneously capture the market share while we’re establishing a modular product line that can scale and grow with the needs of the market,” Morgan said. “Our ability to do that this year has been challenged in terms of the significant demand we saw for our product.” To meet those demands, Clearfield opened a new distribution center in Minnesota during their fiscal Q2, which effectively doubled their U.S. footprint.
Providing fiber products to their over 700 providers in many under-served communities across the United States is a point of pride for Clearfield. And, as Morgan pointed out, now is a critical time for fiber-fed broadband. “We estimate the broadband providers will reach more homes with fiber in the next five years more than the combined total number of homes passed through the entire industry through 2020.
It is a time of enormous opportunity, and facilities like the one in Brooklyn Park will ensure Clearfield can meet the needs of the industry today, tomorrow, and in the future. Morgan noted partner providers were experiencing heavy demand and running into difficulties getting the product to support their needs. So, to ensure product availability for their client base, Clearfield is investing to increase its footprint and strengthen the supply chain to make these broadband initiatives a success.