In a further sign of strength in Connecticut’s manufacturing sector, is adding more than a dozen workers and building a 14,500-square-foot expansion at its Farmington headquarters.
The projected $3 million project will create improved logistics in the warehouse operation along with new space for the company’s tooling center, which crafts the high-tech equipment used at its fan manufacturing plants in and .
“We’re expanding our R&D set up here, we’re investing in new capabilities, new equipment and more people,” Chief Executive Officer Mark Shiring said during a recent tour of the company’s roughly 240,000-square-foot headquarters, manufacturing and warehouse campus on Hyde Road.
The company two years ago built a nearly 180,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Tennessee, a move that Shiring said was necessary because the Farmington campus didn’t have enough space. Sales, engineering and the high-tech end of the company’s manufacturing remain in Connecticut, he said.
The region’s skilled workforce in precision manufacturing plays a major role in keeping those parts of the business here, he said.
“We’ve been in Farmington for over 20 years. This is where our research and development is centered, we have a high competency in value-added systems and in our sheet metal technology, all the metals that go into our product,” he said. “The manufacturing we do here is high-technology manufacturing; we’re embedded here.”
Connecticut’s long-term economic development plans focus on advanced manufacturing and medical sciences as two of the state’s key growth areas.
Just last month, RTX Corp. released plans to build a 313,000-square-foot building on its Pratt & Whitney campus in East 蜜聊直播. The aerospace giant will first tear down the decades-old OBB Building there; plans show it will be replaced with the multistory office building.
And last year, Mott Corp., a high-tech manufacturer in Farmington, announced plans to expand into a new 65,000-square-foot facility and hire 100 additional employees.
Another prominent Farmington employer, Germany’s TRUMPF Inc., is adding about 56,000 square feet to its advanced manufacturing center in the industrial park. The company’s campus in Farmington holds its U.S. headquarters, and totals roughly 400,000 square feet of space used for manufacturing as well as offices and warehousing.
Products from ebm-papst are used in residential appliances, but also in heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems in stores, hospitals, convention centers, supermarkets, data centers and other high-demand buildings.
The company manufactures high-precision fan blades and other components for systems that control building temperatures, with a special focus on energy savings. The Farmington facility’s tooling center designs and crafts the equipment used to produce products elsewhere in the building as well as at its new Tennessee factory.
The Farmington campus employs about 250 people, the Tennessee plant has another 200 and more than 50 sales and marketing staffers are deployed around the country.
“We’re currently adding. Over the last year we hired over 100 people for the organization; it was in R&D, supply chain and sourcing, industrial engineering and automation engineering,” Shiring said.
