Jeremy Ratliff
Reporter
On Wednesday, August 29, Premier Companies unveiled their newly completed expansion, consisting of a 12,000 square foot powder coating facility on the company’s existing campus on Heldt Street.
According to Premier Companies Operations Manager Mike VanDerGeest, the ultimate goal of the expansion and associated equipment upgrade, was to further expand the Laser Cutting Division’s ability to efficiently fulfill customer demand, while also providing a more comfortable working environment for employees.
“Along with the construction of our new powder coating facility, we will be upgrading from our current ‘batch system’ to an overhead conveyor system,” he explained in April when the project was still in its infancy. “The upgrade will help us to keep pace with customer demand, minimize turnaround times for customer orders, while also keeping customer costs down. We are very excited for what the expansion will mean for our company,”
“The completion of our new powder coating facility enables us to become a one-stop manufacturing facility,” adds Laser Cutting Division Operations Manager James Borelli. “We can now bring in a raw product and send out a finished product to our customers.”
Established in 2000, as Premier Touchless Drying Systems located at 107 E. 1st St., the company consisted of just three staff members. Following relocation in 2004 to its present location at 2210 Heldt St., Premier Touchless Drying Systems occupied two facilities on grounds. Now 14 years later, Premier has expanded to include a total of five 12,000 square foot facilities, 27 additional employees and the addition of a Precision Laser Cutting division.
The expansion to the new facility was projected to include six new jobs to staff the power coating line. According to VanDerGeest, four new positions have been filled and the company is currently in the midst of a hiring process to fill the remaining two positions.
Currently Premier Touchless Drying Systems serves customers worldwide with the manufacturing of vacuums and dryers for the car wash industry. Precision Laser Cutting currently serves customers around the Midwestern US with metal fabrication and powder coating, as well as various custom work such as signage, banners and etching.