Positions with Hansen Technologies are still available. For information about employment, contact the Georgia Department of Labor’s Athens Career Center at 706-583-2550.
COMMERCE — Instead of losing jobs, Jackson County will be gaining positions after a manufacturing plant is closed.
Hansen Technologies has announced plans to close its Burr Ridge, Ill., plant and move operations to the Roper Pumps facility in Commerce. Hansen manufactures components for refrigeration systems, and the move is expected to create at least 60 new positions.
“We will be hiring everyone from management to the people who will be working on the (production) floor,” said Walt Stadnisky, president of Roper Pumps.
Lanier Technical College will be providing training for new employees.
In being chosen as the relocation site, Roper Pump officials also helped to streamline Hansen’s production process.
“Moving materials is one of the most wasteful, non-value adding steps in the manufacturing process,” said Stadnisky. “By streamlining production, we are able to do things cheaper and faster than they were previously done.”
To prepare for the move, Roper rearranged existing operations and added an additional 6,000 square feet of manufacturing space bringing the total to 190,000 square feet for the entire facility. Because the Hansen operations are nearly equal to that of Roper, Stadnisky says truck traffic in and out of the facility will be doubled once the move is complete.
Anticipating the additional traffic, Roper administrators worked with local and state officials to improve the main access road, Old Maysville Road, to add a turning and deceleration lane.
New employees will receive training free of charge through the state’s QuickStart program.
“QuickStart is an incentive that the state of Georgia offers to encourage job creation,” said Mike Grundmann, QuickStart director of regional project operations.
“We want to ensure that when a business opens in Georgia, that it has the employees it needs to be successful. We customize training to fit the needs of the individual businesses.”
The training takes place on site and also on the technical college campuses around the state. Since 1967, the program has “trained more than 600,000 employees through 5,100 projects with a broad range of industries.”
Lanier Tech’s Jackson County campus will be used as a training site for the new Hansen employees.
In addition to preparing for the move, Roper officials are also looking at what materials could be produced in-house in the future, instead of being purchased from the existing Hansen suppliers. The process, known as in-sourcing, could help create additional jobs.
“This is really a big deal. In-sourcing is a complete reversal of the thinking that has been around for the past few years,” said Russell Vandiver, Lanier Tech’s vice president of economic development. “It creates local jobs and also helps industries become more self-sustaining, which improves their chances of staying in business.”
The Hansen announcement comes several months after another Jackson County manufacturer announced that it would be closing its local facility. In March, Caterpillar Inc. announced that it would be closing the Jefferson facility, which affected 89 employees.
Hansen Technologies is expected to relocate its manufacturing plant to Commerce in August.