CNC Industries expanding factory, adding jobs

Published: March 6, 2012 3:00 a.m.

CNC Industries expanding factory, adding jobs

Sherry Slater | The Journal Gazette

CNC Industries Inc. is finally going ahead with a factory expansion that’s been on the drawing board for four years, a company official said Monday.

The company will break ground in a couple of weeks on a 21,000-square-foot expansion to its 35,000-square-foot factory at 3810 Fourier Drive.

The $1 million addition is expected to be completed by early June, Vice President Steven Deam Jr. said. Briner Building Inc. in Bluffton is designing and building the expansion.

Deam first talked about the building plans in August 2008.

But before the walls could go up, the bottom dropped out on a company hard-hit by the recession. Revenue declined 45 percent from 2008 to 2009, Deam said.

The Fort Wayne-based precision machining company supplies the aerospace and defense industries.

With a recovery now taking hold, the project is back on, including plans to install $3 million to $5 million in new equipment over the next two years and hire 20 to 40 workers each of the next five to 10 years, Deam said.

“We’re back in line and growing faster than ever before,” he said.

The company will be hiring assembly workers and machinists with wages ranging from $12 to $25 an hour. The help-wanted list will also include some engineers, who start at about $50,000 a year.

CNC, which employs 54, recorded its third-highest annual revenue last year, Deam said. The privately held company doesn’t release revenue figures.