Fuyao hiring a milestone for Moraine plant

Fuyao Glass America Inc. in Moraine now has more than 1,000 employees working at its Stroop Road plant, reaching a notable milestone, a company executive said Thursday.

The number of people employed at the windshield-manufactruing plant is now more than the number of people General Motors employed when it ended its operations in the same factory in 2008.

“I think we’re at 1,100 (workers) now,” said David Burrows, Fuyao vice president, facilities. “Between our full-time employees and the temps we bring in who become full-time.”

Dave Hicks, Moraine city manager, urged GM in 2007 and 2008 not to leave the plant. More than once, Hicks and other area officials journeyed to Detroit to lobby GM leaders face-to-face.

“It’s noteworthy, and it’s invigorating to the city,” Hicks said.

Fuyao bought most of the plant in May 2014 for $15 million. The company is able to hire because it is finding the right people, Burrows said.

“Right now, we are,” he said. “We like to bring them in and we want to get them trained. Fuyao is really big on promoting from within.”

Fuyao has a firm hiring goal ultimately of about 1,600 workers, and employment there could reach as high as 2,000 workers, but that latter number is less certain, Burrows said.

The plant is shipping finished automobile glass to Hyundai in Alabama and is gearing up to ship glass to Chrysler and GM, but hasn’t started those shipments yet, Burrows said. After-market glass shipments to Safelite Auto Glass have also started.

Dealing with the aftermarket-glass market — a project first announced last January — resulted in plans to hire another 750 people at the plant.

A second plant expansion has started, as well. That expansion will be 106,400 square feet, and it will be in addition to an earlier, 120,000-square-foot plant expansion, Burrows said.

“If you drove by now on the south side (of the plant), you would think it’s just part of the building,” Burrows said, referring to the earlier expansion, which was for storage needs. “It’s doing really well.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, issued a statement Thursday congratulating the company.

“From the beginning, Fuyao has worked with the Dayton community along with myself to ensure they can grow our local economy and create jobs,” Turner said in the statement. “Reaching this milestone is a testament to the talented and dedicated workforce in the Dayton area, and our commitment to increasing manufacturing jobs.”

After GM left the 4.5-million-square-foot plant, the city’s first goal was to get other employers in the plant. In 2010, Hicks cold-called Stuart Lichter, principal of Downey, Calif.-based Industrial Realty Group (IRG) and an active re-developer of industrial properties in Ohio and elsewhere.

“IRG was our best option,” Hicks said.

Initially, Lichter told Hicks he would give him two minutes over the phone. “OK, I’ll take it,” Hicks said.

That first call stretched beyond two minutes. In 2011, IRG bought the 465-acre property from Racer Trust, which was holding and selling previously owned GM properties after GM went through bankruptcy.

In time, JobsOhio, the state’s private development arm, and IRG brought leaders of Fuyao, including Chairman Cao DeWang, to examine the plant. At the time, Burrows was an executive for the Dayton Development Coalition, and he was involved in the effort.

“They have exceeded every goal they have set, every standard they gave us,” Hicks said of Fuyao.

Last year, Cao DeWang said the local plant will in time be the world’s largest auto glass manufacturing facility, producing 4.5 million auto glass sets annually for original equipment manufacturers like Honda, BMW, Ford, GM and others. The plant will also make 5 million glass sets for after-market glass suppliers.

DDN
Thomas Gnau