Manufacturing alive in Muskegon County

Manufacturing alive in Muskegon County, but high skills needed

By Dave Alexander | Muskegon Chronicle

October 24, 2009, 6:40AM

Manufacturing isn’t dead in Muskegon County but future workers will need high-level skills.

That’s what a crowd at Friday’s Muskegon Area Chamber of Commerce breakfast was told by presenters from Alcoa Howmet Castings, Bayer Crop Science and Cole’s Quality Foods.

“The days of high pay and low skill are over,” said Bayer Crop Science’s Karl Bloss. The German chemical company makes the active ingredients for agricultural products from its Muskegon Township plant on Whitehall Road.

“We have the high-skill, high-pay jobs. We don’t need button pushers but those that understand the chemistry,” he said.

With 60 employees, Bayer has just completed a $15 million expansion project in Muskegon, where it produces five different ingredients for Bayer farm products. In addition to growing its own business, the company also has more than 300 acres it plans to develop into an industrial park.

Cole’s Quality Foods President John Sommavilla said the frozen garlic bread maker, founded inn 1943, is a Muskegon survivor. A strategic planning process over the past five years has led to new products such as cheese-filled bread sticks and sales increases of about 45 percent.

“It depends on having the right culture here in our plant in Muskegon,” Sommavilla said of employing 150 people between its Muskegon production plant and its Grand Rapids corporate headquarters. “We need our people on the same page every day.”

Besides new products, the employee-driven planning process has led to expansion of its frozen baked goods to private brands for grocers such as Kroger and Meijer, institutional sales to schools and health care facilities and distribution through food service companies such as Gordon Foods, Sommavilla said.

Alcoa Howmet remains Muskegon County’s largest industrial employer with 2,100 workers but the past 18 months have been difficult, said Boyd Mueller, head of the company’s research center in Whitehall.

The maker of turbine blades for jet engines had 2,400 employees prior to the economic downturn and has 700 on layoff, Mueller said. The company recently recalled 75 workers.

“Hopefully, we have hit bottom,” Mueller said of difficulties caused not only by economic pressures but also a Boeing strike and the inability of the company to get its new Boeing 787 through production. Howmet makes parts for General Electric and Rolls Royce engines on the new Boeing 787, he said.

Worker skills also are critical at Howmet, which must compete with its $20-an-hour labor costs in Whitehall versus $4 an hour in Mexico and less than $1 an hour in China.

“To keep the jobs locally, our workers have to be that much more productive,” Mueller said. “Without skills, you can’t do that. Productivity allows our workers to make those kinds of wages.”