(Radio Iowa) – The leader of one of the businesses that will benefit from a new state economic development program is providing more details about their plans. Vermeer Corporation in Pella is receiving incentives from the Business Incentives for Growth or BIG program. Vermeer C-E-O Jason Andringa says they are building a new 300-thousand square foot state-of-the-art plant in Bondurant to build parts for it trenchers and drilling equipment.

“For trenchers, the booms, and the cutting teeth that a trencher uses to make a trench. For horizontal directional drilling, which is an incredibly important product line for Vermeer, it’s the tooling that goes on the front of the drill stem and the tooling that opens up the hole,” he says. Andringa says the facility will also include machining, welding, painting and assembly functions to give Vermeer Des Moines versatility to meet a continually growing demand, including new generations of equipment, from their Utility, Tree Care and Landscape product line ups. Andringa says their Des Moines operations began in the spring of 2023 by leasing a 108-thousand square foot facility, but now need more space. He says the Des Moines metro also supplies more employees.

“And here in Pella, I would say that the size of our facility has more or less fully occupied the workforce that is available within a driving distance of Pella,” Andringa says. “With our experiment in Des Moines, we are able to tap into a much greater pool of workforce. And that’s what we need.” The IEDA says the new Vermeer plant in Bondurant promises to create 182 jobs with a capitol investment of nearly 103 million dollars. Vermeer Corporation is family-owned and began an agricultural equipment manufacturer, with 80 percent of its business now focused on industrial equipment.

Other companies that were awarded incentives under the BIG program include: Arconic aluminum of Davenport for a casting facility in Bettendorf, CCB Packaging in Hiawatha for an automated production line for packaging it provides to food and pharmaceutical companies, Sewer Equipment Company of America in Illinois plans to purchase a facility in Iowa to manufacture its sewer cleaning and vacuum equipment components, and Revolution Concrete Mixers in Minnesota will purchase an existing facility in Waverly and install approximately eight million dollars in equipment to establish new production and assembly operations.