Reko plans $5.5M plant expansion
Construction at Lakeshore facility set to get underway within weeks
Reko International Group Inc. announced Wednesday a $5.5-million “manufacturing and innovation facility” to be built next door to its two existing premises in Lakeshore.
Construction of the 40,000-square-foot expansion on Silver Creek Industrial Drive is expected to commence in the coming weeks and be completed by March, said Reko chief financial officer Marilyn Crowley.
Currently, the company employs about 200 workers at its 45,000-square-foot Reko manufacturing plant, which houses automation and tooling divisions, and 60,000-square-foot Concorde plant, which houses a custom precision-machining division.
“We do anticipate growth in employment,” said Crowley, although she wouldn’t divulge what those additional job numbers might be. The automation, tool and machining company, publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, began as a family operation 41 years ago and is headed by president and CEO Diane Reko.
The company said the new facility will allow for an expansion of its automation equipment, moulds and machining services for customers. The automotive sector remains a dominant segment for the company, which is also active as a supplier to the oil and gas and other sectors. Crowley said renewable energy — solar and wind — is a new area of opportunity the company might also explore. Reko’s customers span the globe.
The automotive sector, however, still rules for the Windsor area’s leading tool, die and mould manufacturing sector.
“We think there are definitely opportunities in the market based on the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and their plans for model launches and updates,” said Crowley.
Earlier this year, Ford announced it would nearly double the number of SUV and crossover models in builds in the U.S. by 2020.
The last month was “the best July in the history of Canada,” DesRosiers Automotive Consultants said Tuesday in its latest monthly Canadian automobile sales report. It was a third consecutive month of record-setting sales in a year when six of the seven months were record-setting, it added.
“The manufacturing of equipment and the manufacturing of tooling and parts is doing really well right now,” said Jonathon Azzopardi, president of Laval Tool & Mould Ltd. and chairman of the Canadian Association of Mould Makers.
It’s become common for big manufacturing expansion announcements in Ontario to be accompanied by politicians bearing cheques from senior government sources, but Reko is paying its own way here.
“Reinvesting in your business in never a bad thing — we have to stay competitive,” Azzopardi said of a local manufacturing sector that is “doing really well — it’s a great story we have to tell in Windsor and Essex County.”
Azzopardi said Reko is one of the local companies that has successfully “weathered many of the storms we’ve seen in manufacturing.”
On the heels of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, Reko in 2011 embarked on a two-year transformation project in which it would sell seven of its local plants and consolidate its operations in two buildings in Lakeshore.
By 2013, the company maintained the largest rooftop solar panel project in Canada, with the equivalent of about 25 per cent of its annual power requirements being generated and sold back into the provincial hydro grid.
Asked whether the new facility’s rooftop would also be used to generate renewable power, Crowley would only say: “Stay tuned.”
The manufacturing of equipment and the manufacturing of tooling and parts is doing really well right now. Reinvesting in your business in never a bad thing.