August 1, 2019
Empire fires up new factory in Poplar Bluff, production starts Monday
Flexibility is a word Jay Eaton used a lot as he walked through the new 136,000-square-foot building for Empire Comfort Systems in Poplar Bluff earlier this week. It’s a word heavily tied to the future, both for the 87-year-old company and the generations of area residents they hope to employ here...
Flexibility is a word Jay Eaton used a lot as he walked through the new 136,000-square-foot building for Empire Comfort Systems in Poplar Bluff earlier this week.
It’s a word heavily tied to the future, both for the 87-year-old company and the generations of area residents they hope to employ here.
Eaton, who is vice president of operations, has spent the end of this week overseeing the move into the South 11th Street building.
About a dozen new workers will begin Monday on assembly of the company’s first product to be made in Poplar Bluff, burners for fireplace inserts. Assembly benches will get production started, but heavier equipment will come soon.
The building isn’t finished, and as that takes place over the coming months, more lines and more employees will move in.
That key word, flexibility, is allowing Empire to make such a quick start.
“We’ve been really focused on creating a building that’s very flexible, that will give us lots of different possible avenues to grow over the next 10 years, but at the same time, not having to redo any infrastructure,” said Eaton, who moved to Poplar Bluff in recent months to oversee the effort. “This isn’t really a typical kind of job. Instead of completing the whole building and then moving in, we’re completing part of it.
“We’ve had to change the whole schedule so that we could get our first line up and running.”
The Belleville, Illinois-based company brings the first new manufacturing facility to be built from the ground up in the Poplar Bluff Industrial Park in the last 30 years.
“This is an exciting time for Poplar Bluff and the surrounding community,” said Poplar Bluff City Manager Mark Massingham. “To have a company like Empire is a great boost to our economy. A lot of hard work by a lot of people went into them locating here and it’s much appreciated.”
Empire expects to hire another five to 10 people over the next couple of months, with a long-term hope of creating up to 200 new jobs.
“We’re designing this to be as flexible as we can because we don’t know what the future is going to bring. Our focus is on creating as much future possibilities as we can,” Eaton said.
A line of fireplace inserts that represent about one-third of company sales, and one-quarter of company profits, are the first items to come to Poplar Bluff, company officials said in May. Before Thanksgiving, the company hopes to be making a line of cast iron stoves here. By February, it would add a line of outdoor items, Broilmaster Premium Grills. And around May 2020, a line of custom decorative facades would join the Poplar Bluff-made items.
“We are not shutting any other facility down. We are not laying anyone off. This is pure growth,” Eaton explained. “We’re making an investment to give us five, 10, 15, years of runway.”
Empire had simply outgrown the space it occupies in Belleville, having purchased the entire block with nowhere left to add on.
“We are growing very quickly because of a focus on how we can provide value to customers through the way we do business with them and through a lot of new products,” Eaton said. “As we do that, we’ve actually had to slow down our customer acquisitions because we needed more manufacturing space.
“This gives us a good foundation for a good 10 years of growth.”
Poplar Bluff means opportunity for Empire, according to Eaton.
“We’ve been in Belleville for four generations, we’ll be here for the next four,” said Eaton. “We don’t do all this lightly. I can’t say how much I appreciate working for the Bauer family, because they really do have a multi-decade, multi-generational vision, and it is so rare to see in today’s world.”
President Nick Bauer and his sister, Jane Bauer Routh, represent the company’s fourth generation. Routh’s 4-year-old son, Henry, the fifth generation, attended a groundbreaking ceremony in May, along with the siblings’ father, Brian Bauer, and mother, Pamela Bauer.
The effort has also included many local and Southeast Missouri businesses, said Steve Halter, president of the Greater Poplar Bluff Area Chamber of Commerce.
Zoellner Construction of Perryville has kept the project on a tight schedule, to ensure Empire is able to be operational at the time it needed to meet the seasonality of its product sales, Halter said.
The deadline to reach this point was Aug. 1, and a full occupancy permit was issued Monday, he said.
Dille and Traxel Architecture, and their project manager Brad Chronister, worked with Empire and its partners to design a building that meets all of its needs, with flexibility in mind, Eaton said.
R.L. Persons Construction of Poplar Bluff won a bid to replace the nearby South 11th Street bridge, a project overseen by the city of Poplar Bluff and paid for with grant money.
Other companies participating in the effort have been Summit Electrical Contracting of Poplar Bluff and Perkins Plumbing of Harviell.
About 20 additional subcontractors will continue working in the new building as spaces are completed, in addition to production line staff.
Collaboration has made this project possible and successful, according to Eaton, starting with efforts by Halter when Empire began looking at the site and continuing through work to customize the factory.
Empire continues to take applications for workers. Anyone interested should email their resume and work history to jobs.poplarbluff@empirecomfort.com .
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