French company Legrand celebrates grand new Union distribution center
Global French industrial company Legrand can reach some 80% of its North American customers in two days from a 627,000-square-foot distribution center off Union Airpark Boulevard, an area that has seen millions of square feet of distribution operations come online in recent years.
Legrand, a producer and distributor of electrical and digital equipment, has grown fivefold over the last two decades, said John Selldorff, Legrand chief executive for North and Central America.
The company has distribution locations on the East and West coasts, Selldorff said. “It only made sense to look for somewhere in the middle of the country that would allow us to improve our ability to serve those customers in a more timely fashion,” he said Thursday at a celebration of the company’s new Union distribution center.
The company could have built the center “a little further south,” but Legrand’s existing Vandalia workforce “tipped the scales” in the location decision, Selldorff said.
The state in 2021 said it expects Legrand North America LLC to create 261 full-time jobs, generating $10.3 million in new annual payroll and while protecting $1.4 million in existing payroll as a result of its Union operation. Selldorff estimated Thursday that the company has some 175 local workers already. The company has committed to hiring at least 200 more in coming years, he said.
The Ohio Tax Credit Authority in 2021 approved a 1.399%, eightyear “job creation tax credit” for the project.
The new center will distribute audio and visual equipment, the very products that brought Legrand to Dayton in the first place.
Legrand bought Morainebased Lastar, Inc., including its Quiktron and C2G (Cables to Go) divisions, in 2014. Seven years before that acquisition, Lastar had moved from a Webster Street location in Dayton to 3555 Kettering Blvd. in Moraine.
If you install audio and visual (A/V) equipment, you know those brand names. Legrand is still known for cables and audio and visual support equipment.
“We have four big divisions,” Selldorff said. “That’s one of them. Each one is a billion dollars in size, it’s very substantial. Lastar is part of that.”
“If you’re a classroom, a conference room or a house of worship, you need A/V equipment, well, we make all the infrastructure — the cabling, the racks and cabinets that hold that equip- ment,” the CEO added. “So we’ll be distributing that type of product here from this location.”
The company also makes switches and sockets.
Developer NorthPoint has invested more than $350 mil- lion in raising 11 industrial and distribution buildings near Dayton International Airport, said Matt Gaston, NorthPoint vice president of development.
Legrand is a stone’s throw away from the Procter & Gamble distribution center that kicked off that wave of development a decade or so ago. Not far away also is Amazon’s newest fulfillment center at 1835 Union Airpark.