Morton Industries is expanding its operations in the Greater Peoria region with the addition of a manufacturing facility in East Peoria.
The company said the site at 2500 N. Main St. will have 80,000 square feet of factory space dedicated to stainless steel production for the growing data center market.
“We had some new prospectives [clients] reach out to us based upon our tube capability, and the data center market is going to have a lot of tubes inside of them,” said vice president of operations Troy Deiss.
“As these things grow throughout the nation and the world, I think the tubular fabrication is going to be even more popular, especially for these that are being used as cooling tubes, cooling the processors and the chips inside the units.”
Deiss said the East Peoria location will be a “carbon-free” facility, and the type of stainless steel fabrication is somewhat new to Morton Industries because it requires “a lot of precision.” He said the company is making a significant investment in converting the building for its needs.
“The building was originally a distribution warehouse, so for us to do our manufacturing space in there and ship in and out of that building, get the raw material in the buildings, we had to do some pretty extensive construction as far as dock space for the trucks,” he said.
Deiss noted the company plans to hire between 50 and 100 employees for the East Peoria building, part of a plan to add roughly 200 jobs this year at its locations across the country.
“We have two plants in Morton, kind of the core business, and as we have branched out, it really came down to a space constraint with the growth that we've experienced here in the last year,” he said.
“So we started looking for facilities in close proximity because of the talent pool that we have in Morton. The East Peoria building kind of came about, and then as we did our research and looked through the logistics of that, it made sense for transitioning people and also machines.”
Chris Setti, CEO of the Greater Peoria Economic Development Council, said seeing a local company boost its presence in the region is always a positive sign.
“This is a capital investment on their part, which we like to see, and it's also an expansion of the workforce,” said Setti. “They’re already a growing company that already had hiring needs, so we always like to see that in our community. But I think that maybe just as important is that this is a growth industry.
“Data centers, for all the controversy that might be surrounding the placement about where these data centers go, they are a reality and they’re going places. It’s exciting to me because we know we have the capabilities of doing things like this in this region.”
Deiss said Morton Industries is focused more on meeting the demands of the market than on any controversies over where data centers are built.
“I think everybody has their own opinion on where they go and how they go,” he said. “How we're looking at it is, as they grow and expand, regardless if that’s in Central Illinois or not, there will be individuals that are asked to be making parts for those builds.
“I know the parts are still going to be needed regardless of the proximity. So we’re going to continue to work with our with our clients and our customers and try to meet their meet their satisfaction.”
Deiss said Morton Industries’ foray into stainless steel production will not overshadow its identity as a leading steel tube fabricator.
“That's always been our core business and we’ll continue that,” he said. “As we grow, as we see needs and potential future customers reach out to us, we are really open to anything that needs a tube. As far as the new business goes, it seems like stainless is going to be the way of the data center market.
“But that doesn't affect the generators that are powering them; it’s still a lot of carbon steel and aluminized steel is going to go into those. They're experiencing a boom as well because of the power generation behind the data centers. So we’re kind of getting hit by both sides of it.”
