During a special Blytheville finance committee meeting, Calstrip Industries Chief Operating Officer Ed Camden made a presentation to the committee about Calstrip Industries' new facility to be built on land owned by Nucor Steel Arkansas in Hickman. Camden explained that Calstrip has plants around the U.S. and Mexico border, including southern Texas, New Mexico and California.
“Our business model the last several years has been, we buy steel from people like Nucor. Nucor is our largest supplier, and we rail it down to the plants along the border. We process it…do various things with it and then we sell it to big OEM like Electrolocks…and Huble and all the big companies that have plants on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border,” Camden said.
Camden added that since Calstrip has maxed out what it can do on the border they have decided to look further north. The first stop on that path north was to Nucor, who is Calstrip’s “favorite supplier.” Calstrip's first phase is a facility of about 105,000 square feet with a slitter, a cut-to-link line and cranes. Camden stated that Calstrip will never be able to employ as many people as Nucor, but they are what he calls “real jobs” with full benefits and starting pay around $18 hourly.
“We have no interest in having permanent temporary employees at our facilities and we do the same benefits package at all of our plants including in California,” Camden said.
Calstrip is also planning two additional phases that would make the facility about 300,000 square feet in around five to six years. Calstrip is considering adding a slick coil oscillator.
The equipment would wind slick coil similar to a spool of thread, and Calstrip is the only company west of the Mississippi that has this equipment.
Training for the new facility would likely involve sending employees from other facilities to train new employees. After initial training, Calstrip would then send some of its new employees to other facilities individually.
“Part of the problem training when you start up a new operation is you’ve got to have some stuff to run…but if you wait until you get the workload to start training people then you can’t get the workout so we do a combination of both,” Camden said.
“Tell me about your community steward and what type of community stewarding you are going to bring to our community. We know Nucor is very supportive of our city and our community. We like to partner like that, it is very important for us to be able to work hand in hand like that,” Councilman John Musgraves said.
“I’ve moved down to New Mexico, I guess it's been eight years ago now and decided that when I moved I wasn’t going to just go ask for stuff, I wanted to give back too…I’m our chair of our southern New Mexico economic development group, so I’m on the other side trying to get companies to come to New Mexico…we try to give back and we try to participate. Honestly, I can’t stand here and say we are going to have the impact Nucor does because we are little guys. But our hope would be after two to three years we’d be employing somewhere between 40 and 50 people, they’d be good jobs…our owner says he never got anywhere by being greedy,” Camden said.
Camden said he hopes the new facility will begin construction soon and be operational by June 2019.
gwilliams@blythevillecourier.com