Officials from the area, the region and the state capital spent some time in Markle Friday afternoon celebrating the opening of Novae Corp.’s dump trailer manufacturing plant.
“This facility will more than double our dump trailer production capacity, it will improve our production efficiency, and at the same time, dramatically improve our paint performance,” Novae President and CEO Steve Bermes said to a small crowd gathered in the facility for the official ribbon cutting.
“The new coating system we created here for the first time anywhere shows the promise of paint performance 10 times better than our previous coating technology,” he added.
Bermes thanked all those involved in the process, from the Novae engineering and construction team to officials from Markle, Huntington County, and the Northeast Indiana Regional Partnership.
“Last May this was a wheat field. Today we’re looking at a state-of-the-art dump trailer manufacturing facility,” he said.
This year marks Novae’s 20th anniversary, and Bermes said it has come a long way since they first made lawn care products in his parents’ barn.
Now, they are the nation’s third largest open trailer manufacturer. Novae employs more than 350 people in 360,000 square feet of manufacturing space in northern Indiana.
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