COVER STORY
River and Martin are working on programs that will involve
public school districts. In Indian River, Piper Aircraft has a
promising paid internship program in which interns attend
Indian River State College tuition-free.
Indian River State College’s Corporate & Community
Training Institute offers what it calls a Fast Track Program
to a manufacturing job on the Treasure Coast. In an intensive
12
PIPER AIRCRAFT
A Piper worker puts together a Garmin G3000 panel for a Piper M600 plane, the instrument
panel for the aircraft made in Vero Beach.
Manufacturing Job Growth Rate 2013-2017 2008-2017
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five-week program designed around an initial set
of manufacturing skills, participants have job interviews
with area manufacturers that partner with IRSC. Among
the partners are Triumph Aerospace Structures and Piper
Aircraft.
Fruth says St. Lucie has the clearest path for new or
expanding manufacturing businesses, mainly because of
a looser regulatory regime than the other two counties.
Tammy Roncaglione, a community president at CenterState
Bank in St. Lucie County, is often called the “den
mother” for the growing membership of the Treasure
Coast Manufacturing Association, which she was instrumental
in founding three years ago. It was four years
ago, Roncaglione says, that she and a few others decided
an organization was needed to help new or expanding
manufacturers navigate the regulatory and permitting
maze in the area. It is also a resource for existing manufacturers,
says Jerry Jacques, the organization’s president,
who is general manager of Advanced Machine and Tool in
Fort Pierce.
Most manufacturing jobs are filled by current residents
of the area. Not all high school or middle school students
are bound for college. Training programs can begin in or
before high school as a way of showing young people as
well as their parents that sustainable careers are available
in manufacturing.
The same weather that has brought people to the
Treasure Coast makes it easier to recruit new businesses,
including manufacturers. Several area companies are
on the Treasure Coast because their leaders vacationed
here as children. Tim Girard moved Girard Equipment’s
headquarters to Vero Beach from New Jersey, where the
maker of liquid-carrying tanks was founded, says Helene
Caseltine, director of development for the Indian River
County Chamber of Commerce.
Treasure Coast Business visited several major manufacturers
in the three counties and spoke with representatives
from several others. Each company expects to grow in
revenue and employees over the next several years.
TRIUMPH AEROSPACE STRUCTURES
At Triumph in Stuart, Kay Robinson is one of nearly
400 employees, one of whom is her daughter, Kim, and
another her granddaughter, Bethany.
“We have three generations working at Triumph,” Robinson
says. “That tells me it’s got to be a good place to work.”
Triumph makes a wide variety of parts for Boeing 747,
Boeing 767 and Boeing 777. On some of the models, they
make center wing boxes, where the wings attach to the
fuselage, which must be able to withstand extremely high
pressure at 35,000 feet from wind and weight, including the
fuel stored in tanks inside the wings.
While it once produced for the commercial jets, the
work at Triumph is now mainly for jets designed to be
Source: POLICOM Calculations
Last 5 Years Last 10 Years
USA 1.1% -0.8%
Florida 3.3% -0.2%
Indian River 3.4% -0.1%
Martin 2.6% 0.9%
St. Lucie 8.8% 2.4%
Metropolitan Area (3 counties) 5.5% 1.5%
Rank among 383 U.S. metro areas 13th 30th
haulers of freight for FedEx Express.
Employment at the factory has gone up and down since it opened in
the 1950s. Recently, those ebbs and flows have been tied to Boeing. The
good news for Triumph in Stuart is that in January its parent company,
Triumph Group, announced a new agreement with Boeing for “major
structural assemblies for the 767.”
It looks for now as if work at the Stuart plant for Tier One supplier
Triumph will expand, in part because of a relocation of work from a Dallas
plant of Triumph, and because Boeing announced recently that it was
kicking up production of its 767s to three per month from 2.5 per month,
says Kurt Heitkamp, president of the Stuart site as well as plants in Texas
and California.
Three may not sound like a lot, but when the product is the sophisticated
center wing section and other assemblies that Triumph makes >>
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