Cabool plant to create 100 jobs

Positronic Industries Inc., a Springfield-based electronic connector manufacturer, July 28 announced it will open a connector assembly facility in Cabool, a Texas County town of about 2,000 with a 6 percent unemployment rate.

The plant, which will be located in a 9,400-square-foot leased building in downtown Cabool, should be open by September, according to John Gentry, Positronic president and chief operating officer.

Positronic expects to initially employ 50 at the new plant, increasing that number to 100 in the next two years. Gentry said the Cabool facility will need employees for assembly, human resources, shipping, receiving, inventory control and quality assurance functions. Unskilled assembly workers will earn between $6 and $7 per hour at the plant after three months of employment, he said.

The company has a five-year lease with Cabool's Department of Economic Development for the two-story building, with an option to terminate the lease if Positronic wants to build its own permanent facility in the area, Gentry said.

"This expansion to Cabool fits into my two- to three-year business plan. It's possible that after two to three years, we might need to move to a bigger facility in the same area, or to an additional one there," Gentry said.

Gentry said the Cabool location is part of the company's long-term strategy for expansion. In June, Positronic purchased a second 30,000-square-foot building in France for automatic machine operations and injection molding machines. Positronic has locations in Puerto Rico and Singapore in addition to its locations in Springfield, Mount Vernon and Miller.

In February 1999, a 43,000-square-foot manufacturing facility was completed in Mount Vernon, making it the home of Positronic's plastic molding and power connector assembly operations for the company's North American customers. The new Mount Vernon facility replaced a 10,000-square-foot satellite factory established in 1988.

"We have historically moved into an area, Mount Vernon for example, by leasing space with the hopes that it will turn into a long-term solution," Gentry said.

According to Positronic, the extreme shortage of qualified workers in southwest Missouri has hampered growth at Positronic's existing facilities and prompted expansion into areas with larger pools of available workers, such as Texas County. Springfield's unemployment rate hovers around 2 percent, compared with the 6 percent rate in the Cabool area.

"We looked at some space in Springfield on Phelps Street. We believed in the Springfield area for our North American customers, so we owed it to ourselves to check the rural areas, too," Gentry said. "It seemed the atmosphere in Cabool was better than all the other areas we looked at expanding to put together including Springfield. They had a very active machine trying to attract us there. There were incentives for the community to have us there because they have a high poverty level and high rate of unemployment."

Cabool Economic Development Director Michael MacPherson said the area's high unemployment rate is due to several large employers pulling out of the Texas County area within the past five years

"The Brown Shoe Co. closed locations in Houston, Cabool and Mountain Grove, all within a year or two of one another, which accounted for about 1,200 jobs. Hutchens Industries closed in Mountain Grove, which accounted for about 300 jobs, and the H.D. Lee Co. factory in Houston closed," MacPherson said. "You're talking about a loss of about 1,800 jobs in this area in the last five years. Those cut-and-sew and shoe factories were the base of this economy for years, and they were all gone. On top of that, both Cabool and Houston suffered major fires in the last year and a half that we're trying to recover from."

MacPherson said Texas County has a population of around 21,500.

The city of Cabool formed the Cabool Community Development Corporation to attract more employers to the area, specifically Positronic. The Missouri Community Bank Tax Credit Program legislation provides for state tax credits for banks that invest in community development programs.

MacPherson said First Home Savings Bank, Cabool State Bank, Great Southern Bank and other private investors finance the CCDC. The city of Cabool, with the CCDC, invested approximately $250,000 to purchase and renovate the Positronic building.