By ROB DOWDY, Shelbyville News staff writer
Makuta Technics, a Columbus-based company, announced Wednesday that it plans to relocate to Shelbyville’s Intelliplex Park.
Makuta makes medical-device components, automotive components and other parts that company president Stuart Kaplan said are often too small to see. He said the components are often shipped to China for assembly before reaching their final destinations. Though the company is small in size with 16 employees, its production is anything but.
“Sixteen people put out 35 million parts last year,” Kaplan said.
Part of that high production number comes from the company operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Kaplan says the company has done so without so much as a skinned knee; Makuta has logged more than 1,000 days without a work-related accident.
The company plans to break ground in January on a 20,000-square-foot facility — the Columbus plant is 11,000 square feet — with enough land to add an additional 20,000 square feet to the building.
Kaplan said the company also will be adding employees once it moves to Shelbyville, but he is unsure how many new jobs will be created.
“We will never generate hundreds of jobs, but people that we have are highly educated and highly motivated people,” Kaplan said.
Makuta has been looking to expand for about two years, and its current location in Columbus didn’t meet its requirements, he said.
“We needed to expand, and there just wasn’t a piece of property that was available,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan believes many of Makuta’s employees will be making the move to Shelby County. He said some already have contacted real estate agents, even though the company’s move is still about a year away.
After discovering Columbus wasn’t in the company’s future, Kaplan contacted Mayor Scott Furgeson about Shelbyville’s Intelliplex Park. Furgeson jumped at the chance to bring the company into the city, and the mayor made sure not to step on any toes in the process. He said he called the Columbus mayor and made sure there was no ill-will between the two cities.
“We didn’t actually go out and actively recruit them,” Furgeson said, adding, “It’s not our goal to go out and steal companies from other communities.”
But what Furgeson did do was load up every Makuta employee on a bus and drive them to Shelbyville, showing them what the city had to offer. First, they toured Shelbyville Middle School, 1200 W. McKay Road, then T.A. Hendricks Elementary School, 1111 St. Joseph Road.
According to Kaplan, the schools tour solidified the company’s move. He said many of Makuta’s employees either presently have children or are planning to have children.
After leaving the schools, the Benesse Oncology Center was next on the tour. There, the employees took a tour and watched presentations from the Shelby County Chamber of Commerce and the Shelbyville Parks and Recreation Department.
“We’ve always said the parks are a great quality-of-life issue, and that really helped us,” Furgeson said.
Overall, Furgeson said it was a community effort that brought Makuta to the city. He thanked the school district, the chamber, Major Hospital, the Shelbyville Common Council, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners and the Shelby County Development Corp. for helping Makuta make up its mind.
“You allowed us, not just me, us, to visualize what was going to take place when Makuta and the Makutians move to Shelbyville,” Kaplan said, addressing those in attendance at Makuta’s announcement at city hall Wednesday afternoon.
The Makutians then went to the site that their facility will eventually rest on. Kaplan said the Intelliplex site was great, especially when compared to other communities “taking us out to a cornfield and telling us to use our imaginations.”
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