Your Story Made Here: Wirco

Your Story Made Here: Wirco

By Melissa Long- 21Alive
By Ian Hoover- 21Alive

April 15, 2015 Updated Apr 15, 2015 at 2:56 PM EDT

AVILLA, Ind. (21Alive) -- At Wirco, a family owned and operated company in Avilla, they make things that go into heat treating furnaces. Trays, baskets, fixtures and tubes used by the automotive industry, steel mills, aerospace and more.

President Chad Wright says: We are one of the links in the chain. We make very much a baseline product that helps them to be able to make the end use product that goes into their tractors, into their cars, into the steel mill making process. We're part of the foundation that helps to make those products.

Their components, which are fabricated at their Avilla plant, have to be able to withstand temperatures of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. To do that ...Wirco has pioneered the process of robotic orbital tig welding and automated pressure welding.

The business has grown over the last decade, with sales five times what they were.

The 60 thousand square foot Avilla plant employs about 140 people.

Wright says: "We employ a lot of welders, fabricators and machinists here in our Avilla plant. We need to have 5 to 6 new employees coming in every quarter in order to fulfill our expansion demands. So we're looking to graduating high school students, graduating college students."

Students like Brevin Bennett, a senior at Hamilton High school, who is interning at Wirco through the Impact Institute, a vocational training program.

Bennett says: " We learn basic machining skills and then we go to an internship for a half day the last quarter of our senior year to gain more skills and to get an idea if it's for sure what we wanna do and for me, I mean, I like it a lot and it's what I want to do."

Chad Wright says: "Folks need to understand that there are great wages…that you can support a great family, have a great style of living as a welder, as a machinist, as a fabricator and you can do that at a lot of places. We try to provide a great quality in our shop so that those folks are treated like they are part of the family.

All of the materials at Wirco are domestically sourced and the company prides itself on its high quality product. The company purchased a 100 thousand square foot foundry in Champaign, Illinois, where their components are forged. The talented welders, fabricators and machinists put it all together in Avilla.

These folks can stand the heat. And so can their products!