Manufacturing firms coming to Utah with significant job gains

Brice Wallace 

A pair of manufacturing companies will expand into Utah, with each planning to create more than 90 jobs in Tooele and Ogden.

Central States Manufacturing Inc., an Arkansas-based roofing and siding materials company, will create 91 jobs in Tooele, while Blue Diamond Industries, a Kentucky-based pipe and conduit company, will add 92 in Ogden. Blue Diamond announced in March it would build a $30 million production facility in Ogden but did not specify the number of jobs connected to the project.

The Central States project announcement came after the company was approved for a tax credit incentive of up to $1.3 million by the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity (Go Utah) board at the board’s June meeting.

Central States’s roofing and siding are used on backyard garages, metal roofs, industrial complexes and agricultural buildings. It began in 1988 in a 15,000-square-foot plant in Rogers, Arkansas, and has expanded since. It became an employee-owned company in 1991 and now has more than 1,000 employee-owners and more than 5,000 customers.

The $25 million Tooele facility is expected to serve the western half of the U.S. The company website indicates Central States has 11 manufacturing locations, with none farther west than Hartford, South Dakota, or Seguin, Texas.

Steve Neeleman, chairman of the Go Utah board’s incentives committee, said the project is “a great opportunity for this company to come and be right there at the ‘Crossroads of the West’ in Tooele County.”

“We want to be able to come out here and service these customers faster and quicker. … There’s a significant amount of business that we service now that we end up shipping either out of our Texas, our Arkansas or our South Dakota plant, and it’s a long ways to get here,” Tim Ruger, the company’s president, told the Go Utah board.

“Tooele, to us, fit a lot of the things that we were looking for in a city and where we like to be. Our culture is one where we want to take part in that community, be able to have an influence in that community, and we think that’s something we’re going to be able to do in that city, in Tooele.”

Tooele Mayor Debbie Winn said she was “thrilled” that the company selected the city for its new plant. “We also believe that they will be a great fit,” she told the Go Utah board. “We’ve got the workforce. We are just very much looking forward to having them begin their business here, and we’re very grateful that they chose us.”

Ruger said most of the hires will be local.

“We feel the workforce is there,” he said. “We understand that a lot of that workforce has to leave Tooele to find a place to work. We prefer to have them not to have them do that, and to offer them to have ownership in our company, which is extremely cool and it’s a differentiator for us. …”

Winn said about 25,000 residents leave the Tooele Valley every day in order to work. “We believe that we can keep many of those here and fill these positions easily for Central States,” she said.

The project is expected to produce new total wages of nearly $25 million over five years and new state tax revenue of more than $5.1 million during that time. The average wage for the new jobs is $57,912.

“Central States Manufacturing is an organization that provides exceptional products and services to its customers, in addition to the value it places in its workforce,” Ryan Starks, Go Utah’s executive director, said in a prepared statement. “The company’s unique business structure speaks to its commitment to the well-being of its employees in addition to the growth of the company. We’re proud for Central States Manufacturing to join many estimable employers in Utah’s business community.”

“Central States Manufacturing’s employee-focused culture is an excellent fit for Tooele City,” said Scott Cuthbertson, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCUtah). “Generational investments of this caliber are exactly the opportunities we want to match with family-centered communities like Tooele.”

“Tooele City is thrilled to welcome Central States Manufacturing into our community,” said Jared Stewart, Tooele’s economic development director. “As a company that offers an annual contribution in company stock to its employee-owners, we know they will value our residents who become their workforce. City leadership appreciates the company values that Central States Manufacturing has shown, and we believe they will add to our shared sense of community pride.”

Go Utah does not provide upfront cash incentives. Each year that an incentivized company meets the obligations in its contract with the state, it will qualify to receive a portion of the new, additional state taxes the company paid to the state.

The Blue Diamond Ogden project is not tied to a state incentive. The company’s duct and pipe products protect fiber optic, data and power cables and are used in residential, power utility, cable TV, broadband, commercial and industrial, and transportation infrastructure projects.

Hexatronic Group, the Sweden-based parent company of subsidiary Blue Diamond, said in March it would build a new duct and pipe production facility in Ogden to produce high-density polyethylene (HDPE) conduit used for telecom and power cables. The company’s fourth factory for duct and pipe in the U.S., production is expected to begin in the 2024 second quarter. The company’s existing plants in Kentucky, Texas and South Carolina were unable to serve the western U.S. due to high transportation costs, Hexatronic said at the time.

Blue Diamond Industries was founded in 2004 and became part of the Hexatronic Group in 2018. Hexatronic develops, markets and delivers products, components and system solutions with a focus on the fiber optic market.

The recent announcement about the project by EDCUtah, Go Utah and Ogden City indicates it involves 92 new jobs and 38,000 square feet.

“Blue Diamond is extremely excited to expand its manufacturing capabilities to Utah,” Kevin Copher, the company’s director of advanced manufacturing and technical engineering, said in a prepared statement. “The new facility in Ogden will allow Blue Diamond to expand and serve customers throughout the United States.”

“We welcome Blue Diamond’s expansion to Northern Utah,” Starks said. “This expansion will benefit the state’s rapid growth and infrastructure needs in construction, transit and expanding telecom access. Utah’s talented and technical workforce is certain to bolster Blue Diamond in these efforts.”

“We are pleased that Blue Diamond Industries has selected Ogden for their western U.S. facility,” said Ogden Mayor Mike Caldwell. “Ogden has a robust manufacturing workforce that will benefit from the new jobs the project will bring to the community.”

Cuthbertson said Blue Diamond selected Ogden after an exhaustive location search, “and we’re confident that their decision will serve them well. Northern Utah’s best-in-class workforce and manufacturing ecosystem offer a solid foundation for this growing company.”