Longtime Garden State producer Anchor Concrete Products, Inc., has commissioned its fourth plant. The 52,000-sq.-ft. Lyndhurst, N.J., facility is geared to conventional and architectural concrete masonry units, plus Keystone Retaining Wall product — for which Anchor holds the New Jersey franchise.

The plant is equipped with a Tiger TG 6 Concrete Products Machine, with quick mold and height change capability; built-in core puller; and monitoring devices that provide operators separate screens for self-diagnosis functions, production reporting and error history. The plant and equipment demonstrate how far Anchor has come since 1952, when founders John and Mildred O'Neill opened shop on a two-acre Brick, N.J., site with a Kelly Tamp machine. They ran the plant seven days a week to keep up with product demand fueled by the building of weekend or summer-type homes along the New Jersey shore.

Anchor Concrete stepped into modern block production four years later with a V3R machine, which positioned the O'Neills to expand beyond a mostly residential customer base. The company relocated its flagship plant in 1966 to a larger site in Brick, adding two higher output block machines over the next decade, while weathering a 1973- 1976 market slump brought on by the energy crisis and recession. With the founders' sons, John and Michael O'Neill, on board, Anchor Concrete switched its focus to value-added masonry units, highlighted by split-rib and split-face product.

As a mom-and-pop operator, the company continued to blaze new trails in its market by entering the paving stone business in 1984, securing a Keystone Retaining Wall unit license three years later. Since then, Anchor has opened plants in Harmony and Howell, N.J., capping off expansion earlier this year with the Lyndhurst property. Across the four plants, the company maintains conventional and architectural block and landscape unit production with the new six-at-a-time product machine, plus two paver and four high-output block machines. A headquarters office is located in Manasquan, N.J.

During the Lyndhurst ramp up, the O'Neill family announced the sale of its business to Oldcastle Inc. Within the Oldcastle Architectural Products Group, Anchor Concrete becomes a key production link along the Atlantic seaboard. The New Jersey operations bridge APG's New England landscape unit plant with more established franchises, including Betco and Adams, serving Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia and the Carolinas. John and Michael O'Neill are retaining their administrative and operations management roles, with additional family members continuing in sales, production and human resources capacities.