New manufacturer for Springfield

An international crane manufacturing firm is opening a plant in Springfield that will likely employ more than 100 people on the city’s west side.

In addition to the blue-collar jobs assembling cranes, the firm will employ a host of professional positions as it plans to make Springfield its first manufacturing site in the U.S., Dominic Jolicoeur, REEL USA Corp’s vice president for North American operations, said.

“We will have jobs in information technology, human resources, engineering, marketing and sales,” he said.

REEL USA Corp. specializes in the custom design, manufacturing and installation of industrial electromechanical lifting devices to serve a wide range of industries, including aerospace, hydroelectricity, nuclear energy, aluminum production, steel production, cement manufacturing, automotive and bulk material handling.

“Hydroelectric plants are mostly in the western United States and nuclear power plants are more on the East Coast, so we wanted to locate somewhere in the middle,” Jolicoeur said. “Illinois has more nuclear power plants than any other state. And we look for that industry to continue to grow in the United States.”

The parent company, REEL, is a conglomerate headquartered in Lyon, France. The company has 57 locations worldwide with more than 3,000 employees. One division, REEL COH, is administered in the Montreal area, while REEL USA Corp. has an office in Mobile, Alabama.

Jolicoeur said the company has been looking for a place to locate its U.S. operations for about a decade and chose Springfield not only because of its central location but because it had a vacant industrial building that met all of the necessary criteria.

He declined to discuss what employees for the firm may be paid.

Ryan McCrady, president and CEO of the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance, said REEL is not receiving any taxpayer-funded subsidies or incentives to locate in Springfield.

The company purchased the property at 3501 W. Mayflower Blvd. last month for $1.6 million, according to Sangamon County tax records. The 65,800-square-foot building sits on more than nine acres of land. The industrial complex previously housed the Howden Fan Co., which closed in 2003.

“They already have a $430,000 remodeling permit,” said Matthew McLaughlin, a project manager for the city of Springfield’s Department of Public Works. “They are doing some work at what used to be a fan manufacturing building there on Mayflower. … (Howden) made big commercial industrial fans.”

McLaughlin said modular buildings are on the site to temporarily house the company’s management. He said the refurbishing of the main building will begin soon.

“They told us that they wanted to have the office staff in place in January and then start the retrofit of the building so they could get moving forward,” he said.

According to the building permit, O’Shea Builder is the general contractor.

Jolicoeur said although the company has a sales office in Alabama, Springfield will be by far its largest U.S. location. The company is starting with 10 local employees but will likely build its workforce up past 100 during the next two or three years, he said.

But Jolicoeur said while the workforce is expected to increase this year, he does not yet have a projected local employment level for the end of 2026.

McCrady said manufacturing jobs such as these are especially coveted by communities because they have greater local economic impact than jobs in other sectors.

“When you think about economic impact, one of the things that you measure is for every new job, how many other jobs in the community does it support? Many times, manufacturing jobs are somewhere in the 3-to-1 range. So, typically it will impact about three other jobs in the community because of the way manufacturers have to procure supplies and all those kinds of activities,” he said.

McCrady said this is a reversal of the trend in which manufacturing jobs leave the county, which has concerned him over the years. He said a “foreign direct investment” – a foreign company making an investment in the U.S. – is “a big win for us.”   

“Large industrial crane assembly and manufacturing is not something that we have here in our community right now. And so, it’s nice to bring in a new set of manufacturing and a new skill set into the community,” he said.

McCrady noted there are more manufacturing jobs in the community than is often perceived, with such employers as Bunn-O-Matic Corporation, Nudo Products and Mel-O-Cream Donuts International.

“When I came to work here at the Growth Alliance, a lot of members of the community expressed that they wanted to see some manufacturing come back to Springfield. So, we’re excited to see this go forward,” he said.

“Typically, what happens is one manufacturer shows up and has a very good experience. We can use that to help attract additional investments, because economic development does have a snowballing effect. One win tends to attract other ones. This is a big step forward for our community in attracting additional manufacturing.”