Press Room Equipment plans move to $6.5M facility

Gary Moore: Company employee count has grown 50% over the past 16 months.

After nearly 35 years in the only home it’s had in Springfield, a manufacturing company plans to move this fall to a new, multimillion-dollar facility in Partnership Industrial Center West.

Press Room Equipment Co. LLC is investing $6.5 million and plans to add 10 jobs with the construction of a roughly 32,000-square-foot facility, said General Manager Gary Moore. The manufacturer of press feeding and coil handling equipment currently operates in leased space at 807 N. Prince Lane near West Chestnut Expressway in northeast Springfield.

A groundbreaking ceremony was held March 26 at PIC West Site H, which is located around 4735 W. Division St. Rich Kramer Construction Inc. is general contractor for the building, which was designed by R.E. Werner Architect LLC.

“Weather permitting, we should get the keys the first part of October,” Moore said, adding it will likely take around four to six weeks from then to get moved. “That’s all being planned and what department’s going to move first, when the inventory is going to be sent over there.”

The new facility will be nearly 80% larger than the company’s 18,000-square-foot space, which currently accommodates a 24-person workforce.

“It starts to be a little bit of a stretch,” Moore said of space in the Prince Lane facility, noting the employee count has grown by eight over the past 16 months. “So, the new building is going to be very welcome. I’m sure the guys are going to be very excited to be a part of that.”

Growth plan
The move is part of a multiphase growth plan for PRE by its ownership, Moundridge, Kansas-based The Bradbury Group, which purchased the manufacturer for undisclosed terms in late 2023 from EnSight Solutions, under the umbrella of Strafford-based manufacturing company Amprod LLC.

“We’re calling that Phase 1,” Moore said of this fall’s move. A second phase calls for expanding the facility to 60,000 square feet within the next five years followed by additional growth to 90,000 square feet within eight years.

“Our strategic goal that we are working on now, we should be doubled in both revenue and employee count in the next three to five years,” he said, noting 2024 revenue finished around $4.2 million and between $5.5 million-$6 million is projected for this year. “(Bradbury Group’s) commitment to us is we’ll be taking on more of their product lines and actually assembling them and building them here in Springfield.”

The Bradbury Group is comprised of U.S. and international manufacturing companies, including New Zealand-based Hayes International, Canada-based Metform International Ltd. and St. Louis-based Beck Automation LLC, according to its website. Originally established in Rhode Island in the late 1970s, PRE moved to Springfield in 1991. The company designs and manufactures equipment for the metal stamping and fabrication industries with products including coil upenders, pallet decoilers, press feed systems and stock reels.

“Our investment in PRE and expansion in Springfield capitalizes on the region’s growing technical labor market in southwest Missouri,” said David Cox, CEO of The Bradbury Group, via email. “We acquired PRE because of the shared values we saw in the current staff with our leadership team in Kansas and the broader Bradbury Group. PRE is a vertical integration for us, adding manufacturing capacity to support The Bradbury Group production needs as well as working collaboratively with other group companies to supply complete lines using products from The Bradbury Group integrated into supply of lines by PRE to their customers.”

Moore, who has worked 17 years for PRE, said he was promoted to general manager from director of business development in late 2023.

“I would say 80% of our business is in the stamping industry,” he said, noting some of its clients are MiTek, which manufactures pieces for the construction industry and pallet racking manufacturer Advanced Storage Products. Past clients include General Electric and Whirlpool Corp.

On the hunt
Cox said PRE needs the larger building to boost staff size, adding he expects the company will add 10 more employees by year’s end.

“When Bradbury bought us, they knew that they did not want the building as part of the deal,” Moore said. “So, they knew right away that they were going to move us. We probably spent the first six months looking for an existing building, which is not easy in Springfield. We had a couple close ones that we were looking at making offers on, and they just didn’t work out.”

That led to transitioning the search to available land on which to construct a new facility.

“The cost is a little bit more upfront, but I think the outcome will be we’ll be able to lay this building down in a way that it flows so much better than what would be an existing building and trying to conform to it,” Moore said.

The company considered land in Strafford and near Brookline, but the desire was to accommodate employees who commuted long distances to work, he said, adding some drive from Stockton and Ava. That led to PIC West in northwest Springfield and Jeff Childs with SVN/Rankin Co. served as real estate broker for the property.

“We wanted to make sure that we did our best to keep it centrally located,” Moore said.

With a move just a few months away, he said it’s an exciting time at PRE.

“It almost feels surreal. I mean, we’ve called this place home since ’91,” he said. “When you’re in the same spot, you kind of overlook some of the stuff that you just have to deal with. For us, just being able to set our facility up in a way that we can implement more lean concepts and make the production flow in a manner that is most efficient is exciting.”

One example of shortcomings in the current facility is adequate power supply.

“We’re getting into the larger production lines that we’re creating for our customers, and we don’t even have 480-volt in this facility,” he said. “We literally had to buy a generator just to run some of the large projects that we’ve been running the last few years. Being able to run over and just actually plug in the right electrical power we need, we’re pretty excited about that.”