Marion County, Ohio, manufacturing company STAR Turbine recently opened a new, expanded facility, which will add jobs to the company. The firm creates "high precision, custom designed steam turbine rings"
President and CEO Colleen Cordova said STAR Turbine is "a leader in high precision, custom design steam turbine rings" that address the issue of distortion in turbines. The company creates parts customized to each turbine for its customers.
"We like to say that we keep steam turbines at peak efficiency and we deliver power to the masses," President and CEO Colleen Cordova said at the grand opening of the new facility recently. "So when you translate what we do, you guys touch it every day, every time you turn on a light."
Cordova said the new facility on West Fairground Street in Marion "is a combined office and manufacturing space of 68,000 square feet." The two former facilities combined only provided 26,000 square feet of floor space for the company, reports the Marion Star.
The State of Ohio awarded STAR Turbine, Inc. a $50,000 JobsOhio Economic Development Grant last year to support the $1 million investment the company has made in developing the new facility. The company was able to add 19 new full-time jobs as a result of the investment and expansion.
"We are very, very thankful for all the support that everyone has provided to get us here today," Cordova said. "The purpose of this move is to allow STAR Turbine to grow. We want to double our sales in the next five years and this is the space to do it in, adding machines and associates to the team. We wanted to stay in Marion, Ohio, and we looked at a lot of frogs before we found our prince. But we were determined to stay here and we found the perfect building.
"We did want to have a place where we could grow, but we also wanted a place we could be proud of, that we wanted to come to work to every day and that we would have one STAR team spirit. It was very, very hard being in two different buildings a couple of miles apart. This will really bring things together and make us so much more efficient."
STAR Turbine currently employs 57 people, but company officials plan to increase the workforce to 70 employees and increase its annual revenue to $22 million by 2025.