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LIBERTY — Edward W. Cumins knows this recession from bust to boom.

Absorbent boom for the BP oil spill, that is.

His company, Supertex, makes high-strength knit tubing called EarthKnit for contractors who stuff it with absorbent materials. Chains of the floating boom are stretched for thousands of feet in the Gulf of Mexico to soak crude oil off the water’s surface.

The white absorbent booms can be used alongside the more visible orange booms that contain the oil slicks but don’t soak them up.

As the spill — and demand — grows, the company is scrambling to expand production and convert old machines to fill orders that won’t end until the Deepwater Horizon well is capped and the oil is sopped up.

Crews in the Gulf have already deployed 10,000 miles of Cumins’ product.

For a company that was at the brink of insolvency three years ago, this environmental catastrophe in the Gulf is indeed a mixed blessing.

“I grew up on the ocean,” said Cumins, who is from New Jersey. “I’m a boater. I feel for that part of the country.”

But it is a godsend for Supertex.

“If we don’t do it I’m sure it’ll be an imported product,” Cumins said.

It means at least $5 million in new business for the company this year, but Cumins can’t really project how high revenue will grow as Supertex expands its production.

His 40 employees are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to keep the machines humming on the loud factory floor like generations of plants before.

Cumins’ machines are, in fact, holdovers from his days as a textile machine dealer stretching back to the 1960s.

“These were machines I had in storage for 20-30 years and I moved from warehouse to warehouse,” Cumins said. “When the Gulf crisis occurred, we saw the opportunity to help out and transform the equipment.”

“It was pretty much serendipity when we came to this,” said Pete Stevenson, director of Supertex’s Geosynthetic Division. “It was a light bulb moment, definitely.”

Cumins founded Supertex in New Jersey in 1982 as a maker of fabric for apparel.

But as the apparel business moved overseas, Cumins found that he had to reinvent the business by making specialized fabrics for such industries as construction and erosion control.

For example, Supertex began making a polymer fabric around 2000 called “geosynthetic” that is a heavy woven grid placed as a layer in road construction. It can also help support walls.

Supertex moved to Liberty in 2001 and now makes a variety of specialty textiles used in apparel, automotive, construction, food, home furnishings, packaging and more.

The potential to make absorbent boom for the oil spill came when Cumins and his engineers perfected an erosion control product just 18 months ago using a high-strength polymer tube.

For generations, erosion control wattles, as they are called, were dominated by a product made in India from shredded coconut shells and woven into absorbent tubes.

Cumins’ product can be filled with anything, including rocks and shredded wood, and laid down anywhere erosion control is needed, such as muddy construction sites or scenic areas like the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Its strong weave means it holds up much longer than coconut or other fabrics, and builders can use it in more creative and permanent ways, Stevenson said.

The most popular is an 8-inch-diameter tube of open weave that can stand up to repeated punishment in the Gulf, for example. There, crews reel in soaked booms, which are made in 10-foot segments and linked together. They squeeze them out and throw them back into the Gulf.

“We have the strongest material that is out there,” Cumins said. His company may be only one in North Carolina making such a product, according to roster of oil spill product suppliers listed by the Industrial Fabrics Association International.

Cumins bought his first building in Liberty in 2001 from a friend who needed to sell quickly. As he remodeled the building to store his machinery, Cumins formed a bond with the employees there who wanted to work for him after the job was finished.

So he taught them how to run textile machines. Several years and 100 trailer loads later, his entire operation had moved to three buildings in Liberty.

But business grew so slowly three years ago that Cumins was pouring his own money into the business and asking workers to take 20 percent pay cuts.

They were loyal, he said, and he has had minimal turnover.

And with this year’s turnaround, he has paid back the wages they gave up earlier, and will likely give the workers a Christmas bonus this year.

He still owns two buildings in Paterson, N.J. One has been leased and another is still for rent.

The town of Liberty, he said, has helped him and his company in more ways than he expected, including extending a $30,000 loan to his company when he needed to upgrade a water line.

Cumins’ son Howard lives with his family in Greensboro and holds the title of vice president and chief operating office.

But Edward Cumins, as much as he likes small-town living, can’t give up his weekly dose of New York life.

So he flies up to his Central Park South apartment every weekend.

But Supertex is where his future lies.

“I’m in the textile industry,” he said. “It’s always feast or famine. And you wait your whole career for a hit like this.”

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com