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 Charter Wire, has nearly completed its move to the Menomonee Valley where it has a new 160,000-square-foot facility. The 73-year-old maker of steel products expects to be completely out of its old location, near Maier Festival Park, by December. Charter Wire's new location, in the Menomonee Valley Industrial Center, is a much easier place for a manufacturer to receive and send shipments of raw materials and finished products. "The whole area has been rejuvenated from the barren wasteland that was there for many years," said Tim Knepprath, project manager for MSI General Corp., the Oconomowoc contractor that designed and built Charter's new facility. Charter Wire is a division of Mequon-based Charter Manufacturing, which operates Wisconsin's only steel mill, in Saukville. The company has finished about two-thirds of its move from the Third Ward, where it operated a plant for more than 70 years. The new building, slightly smaller than the old one, is a more efficient workplace. As the company expanded, it had to make creative use of its space and design equipment to work around columns and corners.
"The move gave us the opportunity to invest in the business and set it up for growth over the next 10 to 20 years," said Robert Graumann, Charter Wire vice president and general manager. It's been a challenge to move large, complex pieces of equipment from the old location to the new facility.
Charter assigned some of its most experienced employees to manage the move, such as 45-year employee John Edwards, who has spent most of his career in machine maintenance.
"There is no way that we could pick up and move a facility like this, as fast as we did, without the experience of guys like John Edwards. It was a big enough project that we didn't want people trying to manage it in their spare time," Graumann said.
The company has about 110 employees. Long-term, the move will result in more jobs as Charter expands its product line.
"Near-term, I think it will help us recover from the recession faster," Graumann said. "A lot of our business flows into automotive markets, so we have been affected like everyone else who supplies automotive products."
Charter Steel, a privately held company, doesn't disclose its sales or business outlook.
Overall, however, the steel industry has been whipsawed by the global recession.
Orders improved from historically low levels earlier in the year but still paled in comparison to levels seen during much of 2008, when surging prices helped steelmakers reap hefty profits.
"We are becoming a bit worried about imports beginning to pick up at a time when the domestic steel market is heading into a seasonal slowdown," the trade publication Steel Market Intelligence wrote in an Oct. 27 note to clients.
"We saw this last year; imports surged to 38% of the market in the first six months of this recession, while the U.S. industry was running at less than 50% of capacity. The risk of a similar outcome through year-end is increasingly apparent," Steel Market Intelligence noted.
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