Regent Tek Industries in Shirley Are the Northeast’s Road Striping Pros
All the white and yellow lines on the road aren’t just paint – in fact, there’s an entire manufacturing process that goes into making them, and a whole lot of them are made on Long Island at Regent Tek Industries Inc. in Shirley.
Helen Torkos, the owner of Regent Tek, started the company about six years ago after spotting a gap in this niche manufacturing market.
Regent Tek sells their Liquid Mile Mark products to municipalities and contractors across the Northeast United States, notably to New York City Department of Transportation and Suffolk County Department of Public Works contractors, who then use it to stripe and restripe lines and marks on the roads.
“We realized that there was no one manufacturing this product in the Northeast,” Torkos says. “We really put our pride into our finished product, it’s better quality and can withstand the cold and hot [weather].”
Regent Tek is a certified women-owned business enterprise and approved thermoplastic manufacturer.
The company’s product is a granular mixture of wax, resins, and glass beads that give the lines their reflectiveness. It is designed especially for the Northeast weather cycle and can withstand about three to five years of New York’s traffic patterns before needing touch-ups.
The road striping product gets shipped in 22-ton truckloads, and some contractors need five to six truckloads per week, Torkos explains.
Once workers have the product, they “melt it down to almost a chocolate consistency, and when it gets down on the ground and cools, it turns into that hard line you see within 1 to 2 minutes,” she says.
Torkos says that since Regent Tek opened at its Shirley factory in 2017, Northeast striping contractors in the area have had an easier time getting the product since it ships directly from the facility.
“It’s for safety for the drivers, for pedestrians, for bicyclists,” Torkos adds. “It’s a safety product that needs to go down. When [the lines] are not visible or not reflective enough, people can get very hurt.”
To learn more, visit regenttek.com.
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