Amada breaks ground in North Carolina

Jay Wagner, mayor of High Point, N.C., presents Amada Holdings Co. Ltd. Chairman and CEO Mitsuo Okamoto with a key to the city.

An event this week gave more evidence of just how strong the U.S. metal fabrication equipment market really is. On Wednesday morning Amada America broke ground on what is slated to be a 162,000-square-foot manufacturing plant and 50,000-sq.-ft. technical center in High Point, N.C., just outside of Greensboro.

Local politicians and economic development officials were on hand to make speeches, toast the company’s new Carolina Technical Center and Manufacturing Center, and, following Japanese tradition, smash open a keg of sake, standing alongside Japan-based Amada Holdings Co. CEO Mitsuo Okamoto and other company executives.

“Last FABTECH, we announced we were going to do something pretty big in the East,” said Mike Guerin, COO of Buena Park, Calif.-based Amada America, in an interview after the event. “The technical center will be on the front of the property, the plant will be in the back. Manufacturing will start here with press brakes as well as automation for lasers. We’ll be close to the customer base here.”

Which press brake models will be made at the plant? Guerin said he couldn’t disclose that, saying only that the press brake in question is a new model that hasn’t been made public. He did say, however, that the machines will have automatic tool change (ATC) available. “They will have the ability to have ATC,” he said. “ATC is really the way forward for us, the new standard.”

Amada customers from the region attended the groundbreaking, including Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Metalworking Solutions and Lithonia, Ga.-based Southern Metalcraft. Both fabricators have invested heavily in automation, and both exemplify what’s driving technology investment in the industry. Cutting speed matters, but total throughput matters more. This calls for investments not only in blanking but also—as exemplified by Amada’s manufacturing investment in North Carolina—in material handling automation and bending.

Construction is slated to take about 18 months. Once complete, the plant is expected to bring 200 jobs to the area between 2020 and 2024. This all comes on the heels of another significant move for Amada, the acquisition of Greensboro, N.C.-based Advanced Technology Sales & Service (ATS), one of the largest machine distributors in the Southeast.

The plant will be Amada’s second major manufacturing facility in the U.S. In 2013 the company opened its laser cutting machine manufacturing plant in Brea, Calif.

Speeches made during the groundbreaking—including those by Yukihiro Fukui, CEO of Amada North America; Guerin; and Okamoto—emphasized the support and quality of the local government and work force, including technical schools and strong employment programs. After the event, Guerin pointed at the land beyond the ceremonial (and air conditioned) tent set up for the groundbreaking. The terrain is flat, expansive, and, as Guerin said, “full of potential. This site gives us opportunity to expand. We needed enough land to get the project going, and then enough land behind that to give us the opportunity to expand even further, decades from now.”

Amada Holdings Co. Ltd. Chairman and CEO Mitsuo Okamota participates in the groundbreaking ceremony next to Darlene Leonard, chair of the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance, High Point Economic Development Corp.