L&W Industries makes move to Strafford

Roughly a year after signing a contract to purchase a building in a Strafford business park, a longtime Springfield manufacturer is nearing the end of the relocation process to its largest facility in the company’s 55-year history.

Most of the manufacturing operations are in place for L&W Industries LLC’s new home at 611 Charles Way in the Southwest Missouri Rail and Business Park. The company’s transition to Strafford has taken place over the past few months, said CEO and president Jenny Carr.

L&W’s new plant is a 140,000-square-foot facility built by Rich Kramer Construction Inc. Rich Kramer, president and co-owner of the construction company, said work on a final 6,500-square-foot portion of the structure, which will hold an office area, is still in progress.

“Hopefully, we’ll be in by Thanksgiving or first of December,” Carr said, noting she’s among the office staff yet to make the move from the company’s Partnership Industrial Center East building at 3850 E. Mustard Way. “We had to be kind of flexible on the timing based on what production was going through.”

Production areas have been brought over in phases for the company that manufactures products for the railroad industry. Among these are signal devices, colorlight signals, grade crossings and railway houses for equipment.

Making investments
In a deal that closed in late October, Carr said L&W sold its 47,000-square-foot PIC West building to Storee Construction Co. The construction company has been a neighbor to L&W in the industrial park for years, she said, adding Storee saw it as an opportunity to expand.

“It was a win-win deal,” she said, declining to disclose the price. “They allowed us to stay in the office until the end of this year.”

L&W additionally was working out of a roughly 35,000-square-foot leased building at 2651 N. Eastgate Ave., which it has also exited. Once the business operations can move in a few weeks, Carr said the company will be under one roof. L&W originally moved into the PIC East facility in 2015 when it employed a staff of 50, according to Springfield Business Journal archives.

Today, the company’s employee count has grown to 78, as Carr said L&W has made investments in workforce and technology since buying the business from the Herb Watkins family in 2012. Ownership consisting of the George Carr and Doug Russell families has invested nearly $5 million toward replacing old equipment, she said, noting most of it was automation related. That includes a laser cutter, a saw and a vertical milling machine.

“When you’re doing automation, you don’t need to add many more employees,” she said, adding the company still is exploring options to increase capacity, such as expanded hours for its weekend shift. “I’ve looked at it and our employee count has not risen as much as I would’ve expected, and so some of that I think is the efficiencies of the machines.”

Still, Carr said the need for employees will always be there to operate the equipment, adding L&W does a lot of cross-training so that projects stay on schedule.

“We have awesome teamwork, a really versatile workforce, and that definitely helps those times and those efficiencies,” she said.

While Carr declined to disclose this year’s revenue, L&W officials previously told SBJ that annual company revenue has ranged $15 million-$25 million since 2012.

“We’re on a steady growth path,” she said.

Strafford activity
At the SWMO Rail and Business Park at Route 66 and State Highway 125, near Interstate 44 and the BNSF Railway Co. line, L&W bought one of the speculative buildings for an undisclosed price. The building features 8- by 9-foot dock doors with 30,000-pound hydraulic pit levelers, plus two larger drive-in doors. It includes parking for 34 full-size trailers and 122 cars, according to project officials.

Rich Kramer, who is developer of the business park with brother Bob Kramer, said the venture is meeting expectations since development of the 220 acres began in 2020. Kramer said consumer products wholesaler Amcon Distributing Co., freight business 417 Express Delivery LLC and St. Louis-based occupational footwear company Warson Group Inc., which does business as Warson Brands, are among other tenants in the industrial park. Warson Brands was the park’s first tenant, according to past SBJ reporting.

“Through hard work and taking educated risks, we are pleased with the progress so far,” Kramer said via email. “We have great industrial partners and real estate development professionals teaming up with the progress.”

Current building sizes at the park range 28,125 to over 210,000 square feet, he said, adding several lots remain available.

The relocation of L&W Industries isn’t the only activity happening near the park on the southwest side of Strafford.

Moline, Illinois-based Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) announced in October that it would invest $13.5 million to expand its Strafford plant. The project is expected to grow the company’s 601 MO-125 facility, known as the John Deere Reman Core Center, by 120,000 square feet. That will grow its footprint to 400,000 square feet, according to past reporting.

John Deere officials say a mid-2025 groundbreaking and 2026 completion is planned for the expansion, which will allow the company to consolidate some of its operations in the Springfield area under one roof.

Space considerations
L&W’s new facility contains manufacturing space that stretches nearly as far as the eye can see. Carr said even as L&W significantly increased its footprint in the move to Strafford, she sometimes wonders if it will be enough to meet client demands. The company sells products to railroads such as BNSF, Union Pacific and Canadian National.

“At first, it didn’t look like that,” she said when asked if the company is already filling out its new space. “And now it does make me a little bit nervous. But we still have a lot of organizing to do, to put things up on the shelves. We’re still kind of working out some of the nuances in terms of the organization.”

But moving from Springfield was a necessity as Carr said L&W was landlocked at PIC East and Strafford provided the space the company was seeking.

“We had looked at expanding there, but when we looked at bringing in our other building that we leased and our growth rate, we figured we were going to have to move anyway,” she said.

While geopolitical issues, along with potential U.S. port strikes, such as the two-day labor walkout that occurred in early October, are reasons for concern about industry supply chain impacts, Carr said she’s optimistic about her company’s long-term outlook.

“By the grace of God, which I would credit a lot of our successes to, our future looks really good right now,” she said.