Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 3, 1993                   TAG: 9306030497
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FINCASTLE                                LENGTH: Medium

PIPE COMPANY TO DELIVER 200 JOBS TO VALLEY

An Ohio metal-pipe manufacturer said Wednesday it will move to Botetourt County this summer, bringing its corporate headquarters and 200 new jobs to the Roanoke Valley.

Connex Pipe Systems Inc., a unit of the Britain-based Whessoe Group Plc, also will close its Pineville, N.C., plant next month, consolidating operations in its new Troutville facility, company officials said.

Connex plans to invest $3.5 million in the impending move, eased by a $75,000 state grant earmarked for site improvements. A maker of high-pressure piping systems for the electric, gas and oil industries, the company will take the 133,000-square-foot building once occupied by Roanoke Iron & Bridge Co., sitting along Virginia 651 in Troutville.

The announcement was the second time in recent weeks that manufacturing firms have opted to move to the Roanoke Valley to escape higher labor and operating costs.

Last month, Transkrit Corp., a New York business-form maker, broke ground on a new office and manufacturing complex in Roanoke's Centre for Industry and Technology. That company hopes to employ 180 by January, many of whom will come from the valley work force.

Decisions by Connex and Transkrit to move their corporate headquarters to the Roanoke Valley were being hailed by business and political leaders who have lamented the recent loss of jobs by leading corporate citizens, such as Dominion Bankshares Corp.

Connex - now based in Marietta, Ohio, on the West Virginia border - had been considering the Roanoke Valley for months, motivated in part by protracted negotiations with its union workers.

On Wednesday, amid fanfare customary for such announcements, company officials said it still was not clear whether its labor force in Virginia will be unionized. "We're quite prepared for it to be either," said Clive Dennis, managing director of Whessoe's pipe systems division.

Reducing labor costs was "one of the factors for sure" that prompted Connex and its parent company to look south for a new location. "What we're looking for is to produce a total quality product," he said. "Labor cost actually is not the issue; it's productivity and total product quality."

Connex President Gilbert Gardner said he expects the company to save money through lower initial labor costs and through a "better working relationship with our workers than we had" in Ohio.

Thirty Connex employees - mostly managers - will be transferred to Troutville, he said, with the bulk of the work force coming from Western Virginia. The company will close its North Carolina facility, which is south of Charlotte, next month and cease operations in Marietta by the end of the year.

Connex's move, speculated for months, appears to be bolstered by the company's imminent signing of a $30 million contract with Marubeni Corp., a Japanese conglomerate under contract to build a power plant in Indonesia.

Business leaders and politicians - including Gov. Douglas Wilder and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Roanoke - lauded the Connex announcement, saying the company should prove a needed salve for a local economy bruised by cutbacks and plant closures.

Botetourt County Administrator Gerald Burgess declared Wednesday "a red-letter day in terms of reversing" the valley's job-loss trend "and bringing new industry to the valley."

"We need manufacturers," Dennis said, aiming his remarks at those who contend manufacturing industries have bleak futures in the U.S. and other highly industrialized countries. "We are here today because because Botetourt County welcomes and supports manufacturing industry."

\ CONNEX PIPE SYSTEMS INC.\ The company: Established as Dravo Pipe Fabrication Inc. in 1952, Connex makes high-pressure metal piping for power plants, chemical processors, pulp and paper mills and other specialized industrial applications.\ \ Owners: Whessoe Group Plc of Darlington, England, a $150 million diversified manufacturing company with holdings in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy and Australia.\ \ New headquarters: 133,000-square-foot building in Troutville, former home to Roanoke Iron & Bridge Co.\ \ Revenues: $30 million to $40 million a year.