THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 22, 1996 TAG: 9601200379
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 21 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover story
SERIES: Forecast 1996
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines
For decades, in the nation and in Virginia, manufacturing has displayed little job growth. From a numbers perspective, the best heavy industry can usually hope for is to hang on to the jobs it has.
In South Hampton Roads in 1996, manufacturers have a chance to do just that - and maybe even add a job or two.
While the forecast for factories may sound predictable, even boring, a steady year in the manufacturing sector would be welcome in Hampton Roads. No one would confuse the region for a manufacturing center like Charlotte, but Tidewater shipyard and factory employees earn some of southeast Virginia's highest wages.
Today, some 1,000 factories in Hampton Roads employ in total about 67,300 workers, only 1,400 less than in 1985, even though Newport News Shipbuilding, the largest private employer in Virginia, has laid off more than 12,000 workers since the peak of the military buildup.
Despite the huge shipyard's layoffs, it and 1,000 other factories still account for about 15 percent of the total wages paid by all 31,000 companies of every type doing business in Hampton Roads. So boring is good when it comes to manufacturing. Its annual payroll exceeds $2.5 billion.
With the help of some new corporate recruits such as the 1,000-employee Gateway 2000 computer factory planned in Hampton, last year's good news at bedrock manufacturers such as Stihl Inc. in Virginia Beach and Ford Motor Co. in Norfolk should be enough momentum to buoy manufacturing employment through 1996.
``We're beginning to see some growth in manufacturing as a result of a very aggressive economic development program,'' said William Mezger, senior economist with the Virginia Employment Commission.
The dollar's weakness has helped, too, by stimulating exports. Evidence of the effect of the weak dollar is the growth at Stihl's Virginia Beach plant. The company has expanded seven times since setting up shop there in 1974 - it's latest expansion is a 50,000 square-foot warehouse.
The privately held German company tapped the local plant last year to manufacturer the company's first-ever under-$200 chain saw for export worldwide. That and the addition of a new line of grass trimmers should mean Stihl will hire about 60 additional workers. The plant now employs about 600.
The success of Ford's Norfolk Assembly Plant, though, comes from the productivity and quality the plant has achieved in comparison to other Ford pickup assembly plants in North America.
The plant in the Campostella section of Norfolk was chosen as the lead factory to produce the redesigned F-150 pickup, the top-selling car or truck in the country for the past 14 years.
The 1997 model F-150 - expected to be unveiled to the nation during Super Bowl commercials - caused the plant to add 450 jobs. Perhaps as important to the security of the plant's more than 2,000 workers is that the 71-year-old factory that got its start making Model Ts received a modernizing facelift to the tune of $521 million to help build the redesigned pickup.
That investment should signal Ford Motor Co.'s view of the plant's future importance. And it could provide some stability in manufacturing in Hampton Roads for years to come. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by Martin Smith-Rodden/The Virginian-Pilot
file
Metro Machine employment was buoyed when repair orders increased 132
percent last year.
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