In This Article:
Apr. 19—Generac Power Systems is expanding and ramping up operations at its manufacturing, assembly and distribution center in Trenton.
The production of generators began there in July of last year.
"We're up to over 500 units a day now — air-cooled home standby (generator) units — with a target of getting up to over 800 by the end of the year," Steven Andrejack, senior director of operations at the facility, told the Rotary Club of Aiken on Monday at Newberry Hall.
The number of employees has grown from around 300 last July to more than 700, he added.
Located at 30 Generac Way, the center is in an approximately 421,000-square-foot building.
"Our office space is about 21,000 square feet, and our manufacturing and warehouse space is about 400,000 square feet," Andrejack said. "Our CEO has announced that we are expanding the building, so we're going up to about 600,000 square feet. Hopefully, we'll get construction started this year. With (issues related to) lead times and supply chains and all that, it's been a little bit of a challenge."
Hiring workers hasn't been a problem at the Trenton facility.
"The labor that we've found has been tremendous," Andrejack said. "When I got here the first thing that everybody told me that I met was, 'Oh my gosh, you can't get that many people.' "
But after placing only a couple of ads, "we got 15,000 applications in two weeks," he continued. "It's been an awesome experience, and it hasn't slowed down yet. We still have over 7,000 of those people that we haven't contacted yet because we can't get to them all. I have 50 to 80 people a week coming in and asking for an application."
Andrejack also discussed why he thought Generac wasn't having trouble attracting employees.
"From my perspective, we try to do things a little different," he said. "We pay a really good wage. Sixty-five to 70% of our jobs are entry level jobs. You can... come right out of high school with no experience on anything. We'll train you, we'll teach you, and (you'll) make $16 to $17 an hour."
The establishment of the facility in Trenton was "about a $90-million investment" for Generac, according to Andrejack.
Generac's corporate headquarters is in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
The company makes other products in addition to generators. They include pressure washers and water pumps.