Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 9, 1993 TAG: 9309090103
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Cooper Industries Inc. said Wednesday it will convert its former Gardner-Denver Mining & Construction plant in Roanoke into a warehouse and distribution center for another division that sells electrical devices.
Moving the Crouse-Hinds Division center to Roanoke will create 70 jobs by early next year.
Crouse-Hinds said it will close a distribution center in Syracuse, N.Y., and smaller centers at several of its manufacturing plants and consolidate those operations in Roanoke. The company hopes to have the center in full operation by January.
The decision will eliminate about 55 jobs in Syracuse and five or six jobs in each of the company's operations in Chicago; Brunswick, Maine; LaGrange, N.C.; and Amarillo, Texas, said Joe R. Hooker, vice president with Crouse-Hinds.
Hooker said the company was preparing the 325,000-square-foot Gardner-Denver facility for sale when it decided to convert it to a warehouse for Crouse-Hinds.
Gardner-Denver Mining & Construction was sold by Cooper Industries late last year to Reedrill Inc. of Sherman, Texas. Reedrill closed the Roanoke industrial equipment factory that had employed about 400 and moved the operation to Texas. Gardner-Denver was the first industry to open in Roanoke's Centre for Industry and Technology, in 1983.
Hooker said Crouse-Hinds had been looking for a central warehouse site. He said the search came together with the parent company's plans to sell its Roanoke facility when a profile of the Crouse-Hinds market revealed that Roanoke was within a day's drive of most of the company's customers. Many of those customers are in the Gulf Coast area.
Crouse-Hinds' products include electrical fittings, plugs and receptacles and industrial lighting. Its customers include mines, off-shore drilling rigs and chemical plants, Hooker said. Among the company's products are explosion-proof switches for use where combustion is a safety hazard.
Hooker said only a couple of people will be transferred to Roanoke from Syracuse. He said some warehouse workers may be hired as early as this month. The warehouse will be set up in October and the company will begin moving inventory in December.
The company declined to reveal its likely pay for the new Roanoke jobs but said they will be competitive. The Virginia Employment Commission says warehouse workers in Western Virginia earn an average of $8.04 an hour, with some paid as much as $13.54 an hour.
The average wage of workers at Gardner-Denver was about $9 an hour, with some wages as high as $14 an hour, the VEC said.
The Syracuse layoffs were announced two weeks after Crouse-Hinds said it was cutting 60 factory jobs there. It also laid off 90 people in July and cut 65 jobs in May.
Hooker said some of the layoffs were of workers hired for the vacation period and others were a result of Crouse-Hinds' business running below projections.
Roanoke's municipal economic development staff apparently was unaware of Crouse-Hinds decision. Hooker said the company had not been able to tell city officials until it made the announcement in Syracuse.
William Tuck, president of Crouse-Hinds, said the consolidation of the warehousing and shipping operations will cut costs.
"In today's competitive market, we must reduce the overall costs of our products to our customers and improve our delivery response time," he said.
by CNB