Officials from ESCO in Newton opened their doors October 2 to show off some of the improvements and upgrades the company has made in its manufacturing facility.
This is one of the first times the manufacturer opened its doors to the public since Weir Group based out of Scotland acquired ESCO last year.
Travis Wilhelm, plant manager for ESCO, said during his presentation to local leaders that ESCO’s Newton office has undergone a major transformation over the last two years, even before the acquisition began. He said that they have almost a brand new management team.
“With that comes a lot of challenges and growth and coming together as a team, and they have done a remarkable job doing that,” Wilhelm said. “Really, the goal has been to set a path here to be a flagship facility, not only within ESCO, but within Weir. For one, it’s one of the largest sites in both organizations, but also to be (a flagship facility) as far as safety, metallurgical practices. And really this team has been coming together to drive that.”
One area that facility has been trying to do is to adopt Weir’s enhanced safety program.
“We just passed our first step in the assessments,” Wilhelm said. “It’s going to be a continuous process to continue to integrate that program.
“They have a standard for how their facility is supposed to operate, how it’s supposed to look,” Wilhelm said. “We did a large cleanup project on the entire site. We hauled off close to 500 tons of material, that’s over the weight of a 747 aircraft. So there’s been a lot of cleanup, a lot of painting, a lot of dust collectors, and a lot of things like that. As our latest visitor to the site said, you’re starting to look like a Weir site.”
ESCO-Weir has also benefitted from an increase in demand, and that meant the facility had to increase its work force and improve the efficiency and reliability of its machinery to keep up with production.
“When I first got here, we were a little under 297 employees,” Wilhelm said. “We’ve grown to 418 employees. So we’ve had a lot of good growth as we move up the production rate. And really it’s been a steady trend since 2015 with a lot of new jobs.
“With that, about 56% of our employees are really 2-to-4-year employees. This facility was built in 1971, and a lot of people who started with ESCO, they worked their entire career here. When you work 30 or 40 years, you’ve earned your retirement and have moved on. So we’ve had to replace that with a new work force. So about 56% of them are in training.”
