Business expands
One local company sees new markets and a growing global oil and natural gas industry as just the ticket for expanding its own business. “There is a lot of opportunity here. We are growing as fast as we want but not as fast as the demand,’ said Gary Burke, Dynamic Materials Corp. general manager and industrial director.
On Friday, Burke reviewed the company’s plans to double the size of its Mount Braddock facility and add about 30 new jobs over the next three years.
DMC Clad Metal in Mount Braddock uses explosives to cold fuse metals of dissimilar nature together. For example, carbon steel plates are bonded with special aluminum skins. Other metals include titanium and those that are resistant to corrosion. Applications of its products have been in the petro-chemicals and shipbuilding industries. The local company, whose headquarters is in Boulder, Colo., does its explosions in the former limestone mines in Dunbar. Metals are then processed and checked for quality at its Mount Braddock plant.
The facility in Mount Braddock is an $8 million state-of-the-art plant, which was completed in 1999.
Burke explained the expansion will cost about $11.1 million, with about $3.1 million going for the new 42,000-square-foot building and $8 million for new equipment.
Fairchance Construction, which built the first DMC processing plant, also is building the second plant on the company’s 14-acre site near the Greater Uniontown Industrial Park on Route 119, north of Uniontown.
“Fairchance Construction is doing a very good job for us,’ Burke said.
The company currently is working three shifts five days a week, with overtime as needed.
Burke said DMC’s employment will grow to about 100 full-time employees by the time the project is complete.
Anyone interested in applying for a job can either visit the plant or the state job center, Burke said.
“Our company is at the maximum in output. We are doing more business in the Far East: China, Japan, Korea and Thailand. We had to open our eyes to the new opportunities and that led to expanding the business here,’ he said.
“What’s really doing it now is the oil and natural gas industry. The market is growing from new operations and retrofits to existing ones. We are getting contracts today that we never would have gotten five or six years ago, from China and Russia, because they are growing so fast and they can’t find the products they need in their own country.’
Burke explained SNPE, a French-based company, had once held the majority of DMC stock. “That’s no longer the case. They sold their DMC stock and we now have a new board of directors. I am told there is no single entity that holds more than 5 or 10 percent of our stock.
“Our new board saw the opportunity, looked around and saw that our U.S. operations would sustain new growth. They decided it would be best placed here in Fayette County,’ he said.
DMC also has cladding operations in Sweden and France and a machine shop in Connecticut that deals with the aerospace industry.
The new plant will be of similar design to the existing one. However, Burke said the company would add a much thinner-clad product to its line, one of about three-sixteenths of an inch, which includes a thin layer of corrosive-resistant metal.
“We will be able to produce products that thin all the way up to 16 inches thick. There is a market for the thin material and we are going after that market very aggressively,’ Burke said.
While the goal is to add 30 jobs, Burke said from 15 to 20 of those full-time positions should be in place by the “end of the fourth-quarter this year. We will have them fully trained by the time we get this up and running by the second-quarter next year.’
“Most of the new employees will be computerized machine operators. We have customized job training.’
“This expansion will just about maximize what we can do on this site,’ he added.
Burke explained by the time the company’s workforce is at target, DMC will have about a $2.5 million payroll.
“This company did about $50 million worth of business last year and we expect to do from $65 (million) to $70 million this year. We probably account for about 80 percent of what DMC does worldwide as a company.’
The other DMC operations do about $28 million in business a year, which sets the company’s total annual revenue at about $100 million.
“We have about 225 people working for us worldwide.’
The state is offering a $2.1 million package of low-interest loans, equipment funds and job-training money to help with the new project.
“There is about $2 million on paper available in low-cost loans,’ Burke said, adding that the decision to take advantage of the loans is not final. “There also is some grant money for equipment and job training,’ he said.
“The investment dollars from the state will be used to purchase needed manufacturing equipment and provide customized job training for the new employees,” he said.
Fay-Penn Economic Development Council and the Governor’s Action Team worked with the company to help secure the state’s investment.
For more information about Dynamic Materials Corp., visit www.dynamicmaterials.com.