Fargo equipment-making plant in growth stage 

08 February 2005
The Associated Press

FARGO, N.D. (AP) - Nearly three years after its plant opened here, Buhler Industries Inc. is looking for more workers.

The Winnipeg-based agricultural equipment manufacturer started building front-end loaders with 15 employees after it opened the Fargo plant in August 2002, plant manager Kevin Pietsch said.

The company has since added 25 employees and plans to add about 100 more, President Craig Engel said. Its expansion has been tempered by the area's limited pool of qualified welders, assemblers and other skilled workers, he said.

"I guess you could say we're on a standing hiring campaign," Engel said. "We knew we would have to be patient in adding employees in Fargo, and that's what we're doing."

The Fargo-Moorhead area's unemployment rate is about 2 percent, one of the lowest in the country, Job Service North Dakota said.

"The low unemployment rate means our economy is doing very well, but it creates certain challenges," said Brian Walters, president of the Fargo-Cass County Economic Development Corp.

Business leaders are working to grow the area's skilled work force by promoting job opportunities and offering training, Walters said.

Buhler Industries, founded in 1933, employs about 850 people at nine Canadian plants and Fargo. The company also operates seven distribution centers, three in the United States.

Buhler employees build a wide range of equipment, including grain augers, tractor-powered snow blowers and mowers, Versatile tractors and wheel loaders.

At the company's 110,000 square-foot plant in Fargo, Buhler employees manufacture front-end loaders and components for other companies, including Fargo's CNH tractor plant, Engel said.

Plans are to shift more work from Canadian plants to Fargo, adding manufacturing lines as workers become available, Pietsch said.

"It's our major growth point at this stage," Engel said of the Fargo plant. 

"They proved to us they could build with better quality and lower cost," he said. "In the manufacturing world, those are the two most important things."