AluTech adds 60 employees in Benton Harbor

Two years ago AluTech moved into the former location of Internet Corp. on Yasdick Drive in Stevensville with a handful of employees who re-launched operations for the company that manufactures automotive components. Quickly its workforce grew to 55. 

 

By late 2010, it was completing plans to bring in an additional $3-million dollars worth of equipment to expand operations there.

 

A tax abatement from the Village of Stevensville set the stage for the hiring of another 15 employees. But before paperwork for the tax abatement was completed another 25 were at work, bringing the staff to 80. By mid-2011 the AluTech team was searching for potential expansion sites to open a second facility.

 

"After a couple of options failed to pan out locally, AluTech elected to purchase the moth-balled Bowater Paper Company plant on Paw Paw Avenue in Benton Harbor, and launched plans for nearly $18-million dollars worth of new equipment installations at that site," says Pat Moody, Cornerstone Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President.

 

Today, AluTech has 190 people on staff at its Stevensville plant and it already has 60 hired at its Benton Harbor facility. 

 

Moody recently presented the 2012 Large Business of the Year Award to AluTech at the combined annual meeting of Cornerstone Alliance and Cornerstone Chamber of Commerce and their affiliate organizations.

 

"This is clearly an outstanding example of Economic Gardening in Michigan’s Great Southwest as this remarkable company celebrates the return of the U.S. auto industry and creates new jobs here on the home front," says Moody.