Mahle Behr
By the numbers
About $160 million: Expected amount of new business drawn to the Dayton plant over the next few years.
$20 million: Amount of annual investment in the Dayton plant for next three years.
1.1 million: Square feet under roof at the Webster Street plant.
76,000: Empolyees at Mahle Behr worldwide.
1,235 employees: Workers at the plant today.
1,550: Workers that company wants 18 months from now.
Source: Mahle Behr
The largest manufacturer within Dayton city limits is getting even larger.
Mahle Behr is investing $25 million this year into its Webster Street plant and $20 million annually for the next three years, plant manager Rob Baker said Monday.
The company also plans to hire more than 300 workers, bringing its total Dayton workforce to about 1,550 employees in the next 18 months, up from about 1,030 workers just nine months ago, he said.
The investment and hiring are being driven by new business, particularly from Chevrolet, Mercedes Benz, BMW and others. The plant — which makes thermal and heating, ventilation and air conditioning products for automobiles — is running three shifts seven days a week, Baker said.
“Business is booming,” Baker said. “Actually, I would say the automotive market is back in full, in a way I haven’t seen in 24 years.”
The plant’s north complex, the building closest to Stanley Avenue, is being remade from a warehouse into an operations site, with room for new injection molding work.
The plant has 1.1 million square feet of space under roof. But about a year ago, only about half of that space was devoted to operations or production. Now, about 500,000 square feet is coming online for operations, and a logistics operation will be shifted to a third-party company.
Company leaders would prefer to devote space to manufacturing rather than storage, Baker said.
“No one is going to lose their job, believe me,” he said. “More than enough jobs are presenting themselves inside the facility.”
A group focusing on shipping of service parts to original equipment manufacturers has moved to Xenia, where Mahle Behr has about 30 employees.
One challenge as a result of all this business: Finding qualified workers.
The plant offers a starting wage of $11.65 an hour, Baker said. Employees can work up to around $16 over eight years. But he acknowledges that may not be high enough in a tight labor market.
“That is something we are looking at,” he said. “Market studies are what we do, traditionally. So far, we’re bringing people in, but we are questioning whether that would be the best starting wage.”
The starting wage for maintenance workers at the plant was recently increased from about $17 to $19 an hour, he said.
Jim Clark, president of the IUE-CWA, which represents hourly workers at the plant, said Mahle Behr’s 2015 acquisition of Delphi’s climate control business is helping bolster business. Baker said some 60 former Delphi employees are being transitioned to the Dayton plant, from Delphi’s former Vandalia facility off Northwoods Boulevard.
Clark said success brings its own challenges.
“They’re in a hiring mode, which always brings some issues,” he said. “Finding the right people, who have the skills and want to work. But it’s a good problem to have.”
William Gibbs, president of IUE-CWA Local 775, the plant’s local unit, said he is open to discussing higher starting wages with the company.
“It’s been extremely tough to get workers, to get them to come in,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s the nature of the game, when you have 15, 20 places in Dayton alone that are hiring. It’s tough to get them to come to your place.”
If new workers aren’t happy at Behr, they simply “go down the street and get another job,” he said.
Said Gibbs, “It’s like the days of NCR, Frigidaire, Delco-Moraine, (when) all those places were hiring, back in the day. You know, you could go anywhere you wanted and work.”
German firm MAHLE GmbH took a majority ownership stake in the Behr Group, which owned the local plant, in 2013. The plant, once owned by Chrysler, has operated since the 1930s.
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