Company planning growth, expansion at former Komatsu site on South Street

GALION — It may be going a little too far to say that Mosier Industrial and Galion’s South Street Commerce Center — which Mosier moved into this year with an eye on buying the entire 28-acre facility — is a match made in heaven.

But the courtship between Mosier representatives and those in local governnment trying to find a tenant for the former Komatsu property was pretty darn close to love at first sight.

“We have other properies … in Johnston, Pennyslvania, in Crestline and a similar site in Springfield, Ohio,” said Matt Songer, a representative of Mosier who gave a tour of the facility Wednesday afternoon to local media. “But when we saw this site, that ended any thought we ever had of turning that Springfield site into our ‘home office.’”

Next Generation Films, which leased the property for several months while building a new factory in Lexington, moved out out of the city-owned commerce center in the spring. Within weeks Mosier representatives had signed a two-year lease of the property and announced their plans to purchase the building, and to move it’s offices in Crestline to the site, as well as equipment from a Mansfield and other sites.

The lease price, according to a March, 2017 Galion City Council meeting, is $10,500 per month.

“We’ve got a great working relationship with Galion,” Songer said. “They helped us out getting this place ready for us to move into. Gary Frankhouse played a big part if getting all of us together. He was a big help. We’re very happy to be here.”

Frankhouse is executive director of The Crawford County Partnership for Education and Economic Development, a fairly new group charged with promoting Crawford County and the Galion area when it comes to manufacturing and other economic ventures.

As for the South Street Commerce Center, formerly the home of HTI, Dresser, Komatsu-Dresser and Komatsu, it seems to portend a bright future for a manufacturing property many had written off.

“We knew Next Gen was only a temporary tenant,” Galion Mayor Tom O’Leary said. “People said we were wasting our money worrying about this property. When we decided to buy it and market it, a lot of people were not happy. But we got it cleaned up, fixed some things up and this is where it led.”

Mosier’s purchase is certainly not a done deal, but it seems they are thrilled with their new Galion site.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do here,” Songer said. “But we’ve just been too busy at some of the other things we’re doing. I guess that’s a good thing. But our owner doesn’ believe in layoffs. When the other work slows down, we’ll be working here on the things we need to do.”

Songer spoke of some of the plans for the Galion site

“Our plan is to move our fabricating operation here,” he explained, adding that could bring more than a dozen jobs to Galion, as well as a few office jobs when the officers come to Galion from Crestline.

Also, Mosier, which bills itself as an industrial service company, is currently looking for workers to fill jobs in that segment of the company workforce.

“We do demolition,” Songer explained. “But that’s really just a small part of what we do. There rigging and industrial service work. We work in any type of industrial setting. We can do it all.”

He couldn’t say what the pay rate is, but it is above mininum wage. And the work is difficult and can involve time away from home for extended period.

Some of the services Mosier provides, according to it its website, include: steel fabrication, process and conveyance systems, plate rolling, salvaged equipment sales. machining, concrete foundations, millwright services; equipment installation, rigging/crane services up to 75 tons, demolition, steel erection, plant decommissioning, maintenance services, value engineering, equipment relocation and electrical service.

You can learn more about Mosier on its website, www.mosierindustrial.com

Mosier employees have been hired to dismantle steel mills when those mills quit making money. And now that the steel industry is doing better, they’re being paid to upgrade facilities, including the current AK Steel mill in Dearborn, Michigan.

“We are a unique business,” Songer said.

The company also recycles and refurbishes equipment needed in factories. If a line in a car company goes down, company representatives will often get in touch with Mosier, which can fix the broken equipment or replace it with something already on hand.

Often times, those types of repairs or retrofits requirie heavy machinery that will be stored in Galion, and in other places. Mosiers has cranes capable of lifting and moving up to 75 tons, that can move and it into place equipment weighing tons. Their fabricating operating will have the capability to produce and move equipment that weight even more, Songer explained.

There currently are about 288,000 square feet of space under roof at Mosier’s Galion site. But the company is only using a portion of the site at this time. It is leasing non-used parts to other companies, including Independence (Ohio) Excavating, Clarion Warehouse and Flashover Maintenance from Lima, Ohio.

That leaves about 120,000 square feet of space available for Mosier to use and ramake to fit its own needs. And if all goes as plans, Moser plans to add another 100 x 300-foot building on the site.