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Whirlpool continues growth
1996: Greenville factory opens on KitchenAid Way, consolidating several smaller downtown plants that first opened in 1946.
1999: Company announces $9.4M 70,000-square-foot expansion to house a production line
May 2016: Company opens $48M, 218,000-square-foot manufacturing expansion.
Monday: Company announces $17M, 327,000-square-foot distribution expansion.
Whirlpool Corp. once again demonstrated confidence in its Greenville plant, announcing plans Monday to nearly double its distribution size there, the latest expansion at the Darke County facility.
The manufacturing site ships all of the company’s KitchenAid small appliances.
The latest $17 million expansion, which will grow the company’s warehouse from 327,000 square feet to approximately 650,000 square feet, builds upon Whirlpool’s commitment to the Greenville, the company said.
“I think there’s a proven track record and a history that we have,” said Ken Hossler, plant leader at the Greenville facility. “We’re definitely able to deliver our projects and deliver our products.”
The company opened this spring its 218,000-square-foot expansion to the manufacturing side of the building, an expansion first announced in early 2014.
That investment involved $40 million to expand the plant to 460,000 square feet from 260,000 square feet. Employment at the plant is expected to rise to about 1,400 in 2018.
The plant today has about 1,200 full- and part-time employees, in both distribution and production, the company said, and about 10,000 workers total across Ohio. The Greenville plant, about an hour’s drive from Dayton, is one of five Whirlpool manufacturing facilities in Ohio.
“They just keep on having a long-term strategy there,” said Mitch Heaton, a Dayton Development Coalition project manager. “As they (Whirlpool) continue to look for ways to be efficient with their North American operations, they keep identifying globally here because it seems to fit all their needs.”
Hossler said strong corporate and community support puts the facility in a good place for expansions.
“Obviously, we produce an iconic brand,” he said. “The KitchenAid stand mixer has been around for a long time. Actually, (since) 1919.”
The plant produces an average of 16,000 units daily, including 10,000 stand mixers, company officials said.
In 2012, Whirlpool received national attention for moving jobs from China to Greenville. The company returned to the U.S. production of KitchenAid hand mixers, which for six years previously had been made by a contractor in Huizhou, China.
In a 2012 interview, Hossler told the Dayton Daily News that his Greenville workforce was eager to compete.
“Greenville is hungry,” he said then. “We are continually looking for new opportunities. We want to make sure we are a viable solution.”
Whirlpool cut about 5,000 jobs and closed a Fort Smith, Ark. plant in the fall of 2011 after experiencing what it called soft demand and high materials costs. But less than two months later, the company announced plans to expand the Greenville plant.
Asked if there is a ceiling to the potential employment at the Greenville facility, Hossler on Monday said, “I don’t know if there is a ceiling.”
He added, “We’re really not thinking about the ceiling. We’re thinking about the next five years — what do we need to do to produce the volume that’s going to be required for the next five years in our long-range plan.”
Whirlpool built the factory in 1996, combining it from other smaller facilities in downtown Greenville. There was a distribution expansion following that in 1999.
Whirlpool calls itself the “No. 1 major appliance manufacturer in the world,” with about $21 billion in annual sales, 97,000 employees and 70 manufacturing and technology research centers in 2015.
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