KM International Adds Building Space, Manufacturing Jobs at Its Lapeer County Facility
Thirty-five years and still going strong … in fact, even stronger.
Despite these challenging times, our small business has seen substantial growth due to our high standards of service and quality of equipment. As a result, we are in the process of adding 16,000 square feet of space to our asphalt maintenance equipment manufacturing facility in North Branch, Michigan, located in Lapeer County.
Along with this expansion, we will add 10 to 15 manufacturing jobs and are proud to be able to contribute to the growth of the Michigan manufacturing workforce in this COVID era. With these additional positions in welding, CNC/plasma operating, and assembly, KM International’s workforce will increase to 50 skilled laborers.
We broke ground on this building addition in August, and we anticipate the addition will be near completion by the end of 2021 and ready for use in early 2022. When it’s all said and done, the addition will bring the total manufacturing space up to more than 50,000 square feet.
While we will continue to place a priority on building our equipment to order as needed, the much-needed additional space will allow us to manufacture and store more finished inventory on hand in order to meet customers’ needs faster.
Currently, most of our larger pieces of equipment, such as the hotbox trailers, are built to order and take 30 days to manufacture simply because we do not have room to store pre-made equipment on site. Now that we will have additional room, we plan to prebuild units so that we can deliver these items to customers in closer to 4 or 5 days rather than the current 30 days.
In the future, we also expect to use the addition for manufacturing space for new products that we plan to add to our catalog.
KM International has been manufacturing road repair equipment for over 30 years in North Branch. What began as a 2-man operation in a pole barn quickly grew to what it is today: a premiere manufacturer of asphalt maintenance equipment for contractors throughout the United States and more than 44 countries around the world.
The initial product offerings included infrared asphalt recyclers and a propane-fired, skid-mounted hotbox. Today, we offer 40 different products and plan to continue to add to our catalog.
In addition to high-quality equipment and outstanding customer support, our longevity and growth is due to our commitment to the community, as reflected in our contributions to local organizations and participation in a variety of fundraisers.
Our goal is to use our new building addition to further advance our mission of supporting contractors around the world while giving back to the local community, and we look forward to what’s to come in 2022!
Come back here then to see our finished building!
