AUBURN — The community of Auburn turned out to be just the right fit for Scot Industries, according to Mayor Norman Yoder.
Two weeks ago, Scot Industries announced it will build a new factory on Auburn’s southwest edge, creating up to 65 new jobs by 2014. The company expects its plant to open in summer 2012.
Founded in 1949 and based in Texas, family-owned Scot Industries operates 10 plants across the nation.
The company specializes in making hydraulic cylinder tubing and chrome-plated piston rods with virtually perfect roundness, Yoder said. Many of its products are using in oil-drilling equipment.
“They’re engineers. They obviously do a lot of due diligence, and they have to feel good about it,” Yoder said about the care Scot Industries took in choosing a site.
“When they got here, it all fit,” said Yoder, who is trained as an engineer, himself.
Yoder said Scot wanted a sister plant for its operations in Muscoda, Wis., and began looking in the Elkhart area of northern Indiana.
The company’s search led to Steuben County, where Scot officials did not like the sandy, gravel-type soils, Yoder said. They wanted clay soils that could stand heavy loads. Steuben County economic development officials steered the company toward Ashley.
Although Scot officials looked seriously at Ashley, they turned their attention to Auburn because of its lower electricity rates, Yoder said.
Scot’s owners first met with met with Yoder and DeKalb County economic development officials last summer, the mayor said.
The company came to Auburn to look at its “shovel-ready” certified industrial sites, but instead chose a tract of land along C.R. 48, just west of I-69. The city had rezoned that site for industry earlier in 2010.
Yoder said having the certified sites brought Scot Industries to Auburn in the first place, however. He said the rezoning and plans for a new water line along C.R. 48 made the southwest site attractive.
“If we wouldn’t have done all those things, this wouldn’t have happened,” Yoder said.
A few weeks after Scot’s owners visited Auburn, Yoder invited them as his guests to the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum’s Benefit Extravaganza last Labor Day weekend. The owners “fell in love with the museum” on their earlier visit, he said.
At the Extravaganza, Scot’s owners specifically asked to meet Keith Busse, CEO of Steel Dynamics Inc. and a museum board member. They had a business relationship with Busse, the mayor said, and Busse helped sell Scot’s owners on northeast Indiana.
“He told them what a great area it was to do business,” especially praising the local work force, Yoder said of Busse. SDI built its first steel mill in rural Butler in the mid-1990s.
Yoder said it then took several months for Scot to complete its purchase of 102 acres of land. The property lies on the south side of C.R. 48 and wraps around to border on I-69.
At a luncheon hosted by the mayor two weeks ago in Auburn, Scot’s owners announced they will invest “several million dollars” to build and equip a new, 250,000-square-foot plant on their Auburn land.
Yoder arranged for Scot Industries to make its announcement as a surprise during a low-key event, billed as his annual report to the city. He said he did not want the room to be filled with people hoping to win contracts to build the new factory.
“I wanted them to meet the community leaders … basically the fabric of the community,” at the announcement luncheon, Yoder said.
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