agNET.net - State Ag News

The growing worldwide demand for grain has helped one Omaha-based manufacturer expand.

So when word first leaked that Intersystems was looking for a larger facility, other communities across the country tried recruiting it, said Walter Greig, president and CEO of ESI, Intersystems' Houston-based corporate parent.

The company recently signed a 10-year lease on a planned building in a new 51-acre industrial park in northwest Omaha.

Why?

"It's not the tax incentives that kept us there, because there aren't many,'' Greig said. "It's the workforce. It's probably the best quality workforce that I've seen anywhere.''

After a year of operating at capacity at its four existing Omaha plants, the company soon will be able to grow that workforce in one consolidated facility at Rainwood Pointe, an industrial park at the southeast corner of Blair High Road (Nebraska Highway 133) and Rainwood Road.

Construction of the 145,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to be completed in November, Greig said.

Intersystems designs and manufactures bulk-material handling systems for agricultural and biofuels industries.

For example, the company designs and makes conveyers that transport corn from railcars to corn silos or into an ethanol plant.

As China's prosperity grows with a middle-class eating more beef, Intersystems benefits from an increased demand for its equipment that transports grain to livestock feed mills, Greig said. Another project transports grain off ships at a Russian port into storage facilities.

The company's international sales have grown from 5 percent to 35 percent over the past seven years, he said.

"The reason we've had such success and the reason we're building this building is that our products have gotten worldwide recognition,'' Greig said. "When someone needs something we make, they will specify the Intersystems brand of products.''

The growth in the ethanol industry has helped, too, impacting Greig's decision on the facility's size, he said.

"It's not the reason we're building it, but it's the reason we're building it the size we are,'' he said. "Because of the incremental volume that we are currently getting from the ethanol industry and that we expect to get, we're making a facility larger than if the ethanol industry didn't exist.''

Intersystems also has seen a significant increase in its export market in the past year or so because of the weak dollar, Greig said. And he expects the dollar to stay weak through 2009.

Still, it's hard to predict how the world economy will play out regarding the number of Intersystems' Omaha employees.

The company now employs 130 people in four plants in Omaha's Chalco area, with one of those locations -- 1330 I St. -- also housing its corporate offices.

Greig declined to specify how many employees will be added with the expansion -- that number is market-dependent, and it's too early to make that determination, he said.

"In our business plan for 2009, we do intend to add more employees after we move in,'' he said. "We couldn't add them right now because we didn't have any capacity for them. It's our expectation that our business is going to continue to grow.''

With the new facility, the company will increase its manufacturing space by 45,000 square feet.

Ed Fleming, the Grubb and Ellis/Pacific Realty broker who represented Greig in the transac
tion, said the Intersystems building, which is being built to suit the company's specifications, will be the first in the park.

"It really kicks off the 51-acre Rainwood Pointe,'' Fleming said. "We hope to do several more build-to-suits in the area.''

The Omaha City Council this week approved the project's rezoning and final plats, which call for 39 acres of industrial and 12 acres of commercial development, said Scott Seaton, Divercon Inc., the park's developer.

The commercial portion could include a gas station, bank, restaurants and other retailers, but no contracts have been signed, Seaton said.

Greig said he liked the northwest Omaha site for several reasons, including its Interstate accessibility. He added that he had interviewed different developers and especially liked Seaton.

Seaton said the Highway 133 expansion helped sell his site.

"Now that the highway's been redone, there's just more things happening in this area,'' he said.