Canadian Firm Plans Local Plant Tekmar Will Construct Warehouse At Liberty Lake
A Canadian manufacturing and distribution company, tekmar Control Systems, has chosen Spokane as the site for its expansion into the United States.
The company, a developer and manufacturer of high-tech electronic controls for operating boilers, pumps and valves in hot water heating systems, is purchasing 2.65 acres at Liberty Lake where it will build a warehouse facility.
“Our business is growing fast,” Don Gibbs, tekmar vice president and manager of research and development, said Wednesday. “And since the United States accounts for a significant portion of our sales, we felt we needed a facility within this country.”
Initially, the Spokane facility will be a distribution operation employing three people. But within about six months of the completion of its local facility, Gibbs said the company will begin some manufacturing operations there.
Bob Cooper, president of the Spokane Area Economic Development Council, said high-tech manufacturers like tekmar are high on the EDC’s priority list of target companies, and described tekmar as a company with “tremendous potential to grow and expand in the Spokane area.”
Gibbs, though, was reluctant to offer details of tekmar’s long-range growth expectations here.
“Our general philosophy all along has been ‘one step at a time,”’ Gibbs said. “We don’t like to make promises or statements about things that are in the works. We just know the general direction we are going, and we’ll see how it all unfolds.”
Tekmar was founded in West Germany in 1963, and became a Canadian company when its founder moved to Vernon, British Columbia, in 1984. It has 30 employees in Canada, and has customers throughout North America.
Gibbs said the company has handled its U.S. distribution out of a public warehouse in Seattle, but chose Spokane to establish its own facility.
“We chose not to expand in the I-5 corridor because of the price of land and so on,” Gibbs said. “We looked also at a number of border towns, but chose Spokane instead because of the availability of skilled people there.”
Gibbs said construction of tekmar’s 10,000-square-foot facility will begin this spring.
He expects construction to be completed in the fall, and operations to start up in Spokane by the end of 1997.
The Spokane Area EDC is a private, non-profit organization that promotes growth and development of the region’s economy by attracting new business investments in the community.
, DataTimes