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Jeffords Steel planning $1.5 million expansion to double space, hire 10 people in Potsdam

Posted 12/7/16

By CRAIG FREILICH POTSDAM -- Jeffords Steel and Engineering Co. is planning to double manufacturing space at its outer Maple Street plant and hire 10 more people, with the help of $300,000 in state …

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Jeffords Steel planning $1.5 million expansion to double space, hire 10 people in Potsdam

Posted

By CRAIG FREILICH

POTSDAM -- Jeffords Steel and Engineering Co. is planning to double manufacturing space at its outer Maple Street plant and hire 10 more people, with the help of $300,000 in state aid.

“In the last four or five years we’ve been trying to expand our business territory and it’s worked,” said Mark Hewitson, general manager at Jeffords’ Potsdam plant. “So we’re trying to expand this space to meet the demand.”

Jeffords plans to an additional 8,000 square feet for its structural steel fabrication work.

The Potsdam plant has a “very tight fabricating facility, so we want to create more manufacturing space,” said Jesse Ringer, president of the Plattsburgh-based company.

The North Country Regional Economic Development Council, which is seeking more than $25 million in state economic development funding for projects in the North Country for 2017, has included Jeffords’ request in its application. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to announce Thursday the total amount the North Country region will receive.

The $300,000 Jeffords is requesting for from the state is part of the total of $1.5 million cost of he expansion, according to the application for aid.

Jeffords takes steel stock and makes structural steel items such as I-beams and assorted miscellaneous products for building components.

“We purchase steel as raw material and fabricate per the specifications, then ship it to the job site,” Ringer said.

One of their jobs was fabricating steel for St. Lawrence Health System’s new building in Canton, and other work all over the state and in neighboring states.

Jeffords hopes to create more space in Potsdam to make “more of established products” rather than develop new product areas, and hire people for “the same sorts of jobs,” Ringer said.

“Overall, the company is very busy,” Ringer said.

He said it’s too early to say when the expansion would be done, but he hopes it will be in 2017.

There are some restrictions on the land next door they want for the expansion, due to concerns about pollution at the industrial site in the western end of the village.

“DEC has to clear it and deem the parcel cleared for development, and once they say it no longer possesses contamination, then we have the green light to purchase and develop the land next door,” Ringer said.

He said he is pleased to be involved in expansion of the company in an area of the state where such developments are “few and far between.”