By DOUG LEDUC, Greater Fort Wayne Business Weekly
dougl@fwbusiness.com
Kendallville stands to get a new employer as a result of changes Huntertown-based Riverside Manufacturing plans to make now that it has acquired Transportation Safety Technologies Inc.
Riverside plans to close a 20,000-square-foot plant in Ligonier and relocate its production to a 75,000-square-foot facility it has purchased in Kendallville from Group Dekko.
"We were able to strike a deal with them and will be moving (all) 150 jobs to the Kendallville area, with full retention of our jobs from Ligonier," said Fred Merritt, chief executive officer for the company.
Most of a $500,000 renovation of the Kendallville facility has been completed, and production will be relocated gradually in the coming months. Merritt expects its employment there to reach 200 by the end of next year.
The two communities are both in Noble County, about 15 miles apart. The relocation should not be a hardship for the employees and it will give the company room to expand production capacity to accommodate growth, he said.
Merritt had wanted Riverside to invest $4 million in an expansion of its Huntertown plant, move production there from Ligonier and fill the new space with $2 million worth of relocated equipment that would be operated by the 150 relocated employees. He said he appreciated the help of some Allen County officials with the project - particularly Mark Royse, deputy director for economic development, and Marla Irving, a former county commissioner.
But Merritt said he couldn't extend similar praise to the Allen County Surveyor's office. After six months of waiting to build on land purchased for the expansion he has abandoned the plan.
Allen County Surveyor Al Frisinger said Riverside's engineer for the project came up with an appropriate drainage plan, which was approved on June 16, 2006. But the office didn't hear from the company after that.
"The drainage was all resolved," he said. "I was kind of wondering what had happened to it. A lot of times you'll get plans and someone's going to do something and it falls apart."
Founded in 1947, Riverside manufactures and assembles lighting, electrical and electro-mechanical products for harsh environments and military applications. The company builds parts for vehicles such as the Humvee, has been supplying electronic components for some of Raytheon's communication systems and is in the early stages of doing some work with ITT.
In the five years since its purchase by Merritt, the company has grown from annual revenues of $5 million and 35 employees to revenues of $43 million and 330 employees.
Combined with Transportation Safety Technologies, the company employs more than 500 employees and its annual revenue exceeds $60 million. The company projects revenues of $100 million by 2009.
Riverside has grown largely as a result of "investment in engineering resources and quality systems and a focus on efficiencies," Merritt said.
"There's five main players in our niche of the market," Merritt said. "In 2002, I would have ranked us as number four and today we're a dominant number one.
"We've done that mostly by adding the engineering resources. We were able to add a lot of new products; we developed a new series of exterior vehicle lights we did not have in 2002."
Merritt sees similar growth potential through the acquisition Riverside just completed. "One of the things we hope to do is utilize a lot of the design talent at TST," he said.
TST has established itself as a leader in innovative electronic solutions for the commercial and emergency transportation industry.
One of TST's new products, Lifeguard 800, is a touch-screen flat panel display, which serves as a control panel for camera and satellite navigation systems as well as many of the electronic controls in a vehicle. The product was just introduced to the ambulance market, and Merritt believes the company can come up with versions that could be used in military and other specialty vehicles.
About 40 percent of TST suppliers are common to Riverside, and the acquisition is expected to bring the combined company some volume discounts when it comes to purchasing.
TST will maintain its 34,000 square-foot facility in Indianapolis and a 26,000-square-foot assembly plant in Fort Payne, Ala. Riverside employs 180 workers in Huntertown and doesn't plan to relocate any of the operations it has there, Merritt said.