The clouds of recession will be parted a bit in South Windsor in about three months when the town gains a new manufacturer.
North Carolina-based Sunbelt-Turret Steel Inc. has signed a contract to establish a distribution center in the former United Steel building at 55 Corneau Way, near the East Hartford line, company officials said.
Privately held Sunbelt-Turret Steel has not yet determined how many workers it will need when the plant opens, according to Neil M. Stein, regional manager for the company’s newly created New England division.
“Because there will be many renovations and improvements required for this site, we are not ready to announce a listing of employees that will be needed in 2009,” Stein said. “It may indeed require many months, but we will be looking for various staff members in the near future.”
Coast To Coast
United Steel moved out of the South Windsor building in 1996 when it returned to its East Hartford roots where it began business in the 1970s under the name East Hartford Welding. Before the move, United had operated out of the 30,000-square-foot, 14-acre Corneau Way site since 1987.
With the acquisition of the South Windsor site to serve the New England area, the aggressively growing Sunbelt-Turret will have stretched its operations across the entire country in little more than a decade.
“We’re going coast to coast,” Stein said, calling the South Windsor move “an amazing opportunity,” which will expand the company’s ability to offer “local inventory and next day service” of steel products to customers in the northeast.
Sunbelt-Turret Steel is a distributor of “hot rolled and forged rough turned carbon and alloy steel bars up to 26-inch diameter,” Stein said. Plans are to be fully operational in South Windsor by February 2009.
Along with sister company Turret Steel Industries Inc., the company operates distribution centers in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas, as well as North Carolina, and will begin operations in California in December, according to Stein.
“We are extremely excited about our choice to have South Windsor serve as our future operations center in the New England region,” Stein said. The company’s steel saw-cutting operations supply large diameter steel bars to a variety of manufacturers, he said.
38-Year History
Turret Steel Industries Inc. was founded as Turret Steel Corp. in 1970, in New York, according to a company history. In 1979, the sales office was relocated to Leetsdale, Penn., outside Pittsburgh, where major company corporate offices also remain.
In 1998, the company became affiliated with Sunbelt-Turret Steel Inc., a steel bar supplier and processor in Charlotte, N.C.
In 1999, the acquisition of a 160,000 square foot plant in Warren, Ohio, “enabled the company to consolidate a number of operations and to add to the services that are offered,” according to the company profile. In 2002, the company acquired an 80,000-square-foot warehouse in Chicago, near Midway airport, and in 2004, it bought a 110,000-square-foot warehouse in Charlotte, N.C. In 2007, the company acquired a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in Cooper Texas, and this year bought a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in Dos Palos, Calif.
