Tweet/Garot plans new manufacturing facility in Wrightstown
By the Green Bay Press-Gazette
DE PERE - Tweet/Garot Mechanical Inc. will consolidate its Green Bay-area construction shops onto a 42-acre site the company purchased Monday in Wrightstown.
The company plans to build a 90,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on the site near County U and Interstate 41 to increase efficiency, facilitate future expansion, tap into the Fox Valley workforce and modernize production processes, CEO Christopher Howald said.
“As we build bigger in our new shop, there will be more shipping to do, so easy access to Interstate 41 will be vital,” Howald said. “We do work in the (Fox) Valley all the time, so this will bring our supply chain closer, not to mention that it opens up access to new employees, as well.”
The terms of the purchase were not disclosed. Howald expects to finalize a development agreement with the village of Wrightstown this month to cover infrastructure improvements needed on the site.
He said construction will begin in October and be completed by late summer 2018. About 50 jobs will be based at the new plant. At least some of them will be new jobs.
Tweet/Garot has been in “growth mode” since it started converting the former Humana Dental building, in downtown De Pere, into its new, corporate headquarters last year. About 120 of the company’s engineers, designers, salespeople and managers have started to move into the headquarters building from Tweet/Garot’s former headquarters on Packerland Drive
“The energy already feels better in here,” Howald said. “Going from an industrial park to an urban campus has been a significant change. A lot of our people have been taking advantage of local restaurants and running or biking to work.”
The land in Wrightstown is a continuation of that growth mode, but this growth is more focused on the company’s frontline employees. The land gives Tweet/Garot the space to consolidate workshops presently spread throughout the Green Bay area.
But it will also offer enough room to shift some production presently done on job sites to the new manufacturing plant. Howald said consolidation and increased production will help the company use its employees more efficiently.
“We’re looking ahead to a decline in construction industry workers,” he said. “Our solution isn’t to minimize workers, but to have the flexibility to spread our guys out over more jobs.”
Tweet/Garot has provided mechanical work, engineering, automation system, sheet metal fabrication, industrial ventilation and other construction services in the Green Bay area for 120 years.