On Thursday, Hoist Liftruck held an open house and ribbon cutting to celebrate the opening of their new manufacturing facility recently completed in East Chicago. On hand to welcome Hoist Liftruck to Northwest Indiana was East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, Hoist President Marty Flaska and members of the Lake County IN Economic Alliance who helped bring Hoist to the region.
“This is our first major project,” said Karen Lauerman, President & CEO of the LCEA. “We got the phone call the second week that Don and I started LCEA in 2014 and then subsequently we worked with their tax consultants, advisors and, obviously, Marty and Vincent (Flaska). LCEA completed various tasks, conducted meetings, ran calculations, and delivered the project to the community. We did all the preliminary meetings and the project introduction for East Chicago and the elected officials. Our latest involvement is helping with this particular event .”
“It’s a great time to be in Lake County,” Lauerman said. “There’s going to be 300 jobs to start and up to 500 over the next several years. $40-$60 million dollars of total investment in not only refurbishing the building restructure, but all of the state of the art equipment that’s here so it’s very exciting. In East Chicago, Lake County and Northwest Indiana people are working. It’s a huge win for East Chicago and Northwest Indiana.”
The new Hoist Liftruck Manufacturing Facility is over 100,000 sq/ft and will increase Hoist’s manufacturing capacity by six times over the old facility. Each Hoist Liftruck to roll out of the facility is entirely made in the U.S.A. and 75% of the materials on each Liftruck is manufactured in-house with the remainder coming from U.S. vendors and suppliers. Hoist President Marty Flaska spoke about the two main goals he had when moving to Northwest Indiana.
“We came from a factory that was a bunch of different buildings collectively that totaled a facility of this size,” said Flaska. “It became increasingly difficult to get product to flow through that facility. At this facility we bring in raw steel, we ship a finished forklift and it moves one direction.”
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“The second was to be in a location where we had access to labor, fair property taxes, fair workmen's compensation laws and skilled labor, Flaska said. “I came from a high school that had welding and machining. That high school closed all those things down. This community has Ivy Tech and at Ivy Tech they teach all those skills so this is a market where if we need 500 more skilled workers we can recruit those workers and get them to come to work in this facility.”
With the relocation of Hoist Liftruck, the revitalization of manufacturing in East Chicago is now in full swing. East Chicago Mayor Anthony Copeland spoke about the positive impact the new facility will have on the future of manufacturing in the region and the state.
“I can tell you that the floodgates were opened when Hoist came to East Chicago,” said Mayor Copeland. “We’ve got seven other companies coming and exploring the area. It’s like success begets success because now it’s believable. When other companies can come and you can show them examples of success like this that’s when it seems to multiply. That’s what this has allowed us to do. It’s allowed us to put a template up from a start to finish of what we have to offer in Indiana.”
