“We’re taking delivery today of a National 1500.”
“We just purchased a whole family of machines. The extra-large machine gets most of the attention because it’s so large. It’s roughly 465,000 pounds.”
“To even move the machine, we had to take it down to 240.000 pounds just to be able to get it on a super truck.”
“It’s got to cross over 13 bridges. This truck can be the only vehicle on those bridges at one time.”
“It went from Germany to Italy to Indiana and now home to Northeast Ohio.”
“As a sales force, what this machine allows us to do is go into a customer that purchases female fittings and let them know that we can make your entire product line.”
“It’s a parts former as compared to all of the equipment that we currently have, which are called nut formers. Our nut formers are fantastic for making pipe plugs. The bad thing is they don’t make anything else other than pipe plugs.”
“It allows us to expand into new markets.”
“That’s the biggest opportunity, is looking for ways to make a part more efficiently at a better savings for a customer.”
“Well to start a whole new division, even though we’re shipping to the same customers, and we’re just making the female fitting. So to make the female fitting, we needed all new equipment.”
“Next step would actually be getting the building finished around it, so we’re going to be finishing the building through this fourth quarter of 2019, start assembling and putting the machine back together. Once that’s complete, we will start then having engineering take over and start producing trial products off of that machine.”
“None of this would be possible if we hadn’t hired the people first.”
“Those are all strategic steps to make Seaway competitive now and in the future.”
“The machine was received in the middle of July, and we’re wanting to have it operational somewhere between August of 2020.”
“It actually is an exciting time for our company.”
“So this is truly an investment into the future of the company, not just from a sales perspective, but from a people perspective, and what this investment does is says hey, this is not a company that’s gonna turn around and sell. It’s a company that’s growing, and it’s a company that’s investing in that growth.”
“It’s a long term play for us. We’re not looking to make a quick buck and exit the market. We’re here to be a stable employer for this region and for our entire industry. I think when we look back on this, we’re gonna consider 2019 and 2020 a huge watershed moment.”