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Alexin — for Aluminum Extrusion Ingot — will be up and running on Bluffton’s southwest side by the end of the month, with an open house planned for sometime this spring.
Todd Johnson, vice president of technical services for Alexin LLC, spoke to the Wells County Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development’s fall quarterly membership luncheon Tuesday. He said the company is still hiring people to get to full staff of 51.
The company’s core business is remelting aluminum extrusion scrap and turning it into billets for use by other industries. “Essentially, we’re a recycling facility,” Johnson told the lunchtime gather at the Arts, Commerce, and Visitors Centre.
The plant represents a $58.1 million investment. The 51 employees will mean $2.7 million into the Bluffton-area economy in payroll and benefits. The company will send out 215 million pounds of recycled aluminum each year and $160 million in revenues — which comes out to $3.1 million in revenue per employee.
Johnson said that he and the other entrepreneurs on Alexin’s management team — Tom Horter, Jeff Stringer, Neil Johnson, and Jay Jarrett — wanted to find a central location in an underserved market. Bluffton is within 240 miles of 44 percent of the U.S. aluminum extrusion market, yet the Midwest as a whole was underserved.
Because geography was a factor, Johnson said the Alexin team was focused on Indiana. It put seven sites in Indiana on its list, as well as two locations in Ohio. “We weren’t all that interested in Ohio, but we had to keep Indiana honest,” he said to laughter from the audience.
Eventually, Bluffton met the criteria the company’s founders felt were necessary — a good and affordable site, access to utilities (the company will have a natural gas bill of $300,000 to $400,000 a month, and will use some 60,000 gallons of water a day), support of local government, and incentives.
“One of the things that was so important to us was the people here in Bluffton,” Johnson said. He cited Mike Row, the county’s economic development director; Diane Johnson and Suzanne Huffman of the Wells County Chamber of Commerce; and Bluffton Mayor Ted Ellis for their support.
“They were just fantastic to work with,” Johnson said. “This was kind of an intangible for us. How do you put a value on the quality of the people in a community?”
Johnson said the agreement with the investors was that the plant would be producing material in a year. That deadline comes up at the end of the month, and Johnson said production will be started by that date.
An open house will be held in the spring, after the facility is into its production cycle and the weather is more conducive to hosting visitors, he said after the meeting.
daves@news-banner.com
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