Family Towel Empire Revives Dead Teutonia Factory for Sixth Milwaukee Plant

One of Milwaukee’s quiet manufacturing success stories is about to breathe life into another long-idle building on the North Side.

Sellars Absorbent Materials is planning a sixth Milwaukee facility at 6900 N. Teutonia Ave., turning a dormant industrial site back into a working plant as demand for its wipers, towels and absorbents keeps climbing.

An occupancy permit request for the roughly three-acre property, which includes a 32,928-square-foot building constructed in 1961, lists the intended use as “manufacturing, heavy,” according to Urban Milwaukee. The outlet reports the building was most recently home to Holming Fan & Fabrication and that the property changed hands in mid-2025.

Company expands capacity

Sellars has been on a steady growth streak. In 2025, the family-owned company said it invested $15 million to open a 100,000-square-foot production plant at 5400 W. Good Hope Rd. to make double re-crepe (DRC) material, with about 20 employees at launch, according to Sellars.

The same corporate release notes Sellars now runs five Milwaukee locations and employs roughly 220 people overall, which helps explain why the company is already hunting for even more room to grow.

Where the new plant fits

Sellars’ local footprint is clustered on Milwaukee’s north side. The company’s headquarters sits at 6565 N. 60th St., with a second manufacturing site on N. Industrial Rd., a distribution center on W. Calumet Rd., and a warehouse on W. Hope Ave.

Milwaukee Magazine has detailed how Sellars has made a habit of repurposing vacant big-box stores and industrial buildings in these neighborhoods, turning empty square footage into active plants and warehouses instead of building new from scratch.

Retail demand is pushing growth

The Teutonia expansion lines up neatly with a big retail break. Sellars’ Bravo paper towels rolled out to roughly 1,475 Target stores this spring, and that nationwide placement has already been linked to faster hiring and shift changes across the company’s Milwaukee operations. The nationwide Target deal has effectively turned the local manufacturer into a much busier player in the paper aisle.

City leaders praise reuse

City officials have been quick to hold up Sellars as a model of how industrial reuse can boost neighborhoods and payrolls at the same time. When the Good Hope Rd. facility opened, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson called the expansion “a big win for Milwaukee” and praised the company for putting long-vacant buildings back to work, according to CBS 58.

This latest move on Teutonia Ave. appears to follow the same playbook: take an older, quiet industrial property and load it up with new machines, new workers and new tax base.

For now, the deal is not fully sealed. Sellars did not respond to a request for comment about the Teutonia project, Urban Milwaukee reports, and the occupancy permit is still under review at City Hall.

That means neighbors, job-seekers and workforce agencies will be watching closely to see when the paperwork clears, when hiring might start and how many new paychecks this once-silent factory could soon be cutting on the North Side.