The COVID-19 pandemic may have put the brakes on holding the annual open house at Dajcor Aluminum Ltd. for a few years, but it couldn’t hold back the Chatham-based company from expanding.
“It’s been continued growth, really an astounding growth,” said Dajcor president Mike Kilby on Saturday during the first open house at the Irwin Street operation since 2019.
He said the company has doubled in size during the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We had a bit of a tough time for the first few months, and then we were deemed essential and we kept going,” Kilby said.
The company makes aluminum products for automotive, light-rail transit, electronics, building and construction, and recreation industries.
Not only did their regular customers come back and order more product after the initial weeks of the pandemic, new customers came on board, Kilby said.
He said Dajcor has an under-one-roof way operating that customers find appealing.
“We do a value-add where we extrude, we fabricate and we anodize all in one spot, so when customers finds us, they like that offering so they tend to stay,” Kilby said.
And the future looks good for the aluminum industry.
With the ramping up of electric vehicles and the “light-weighting” in a lot of other products. “that tail-wind for our industry is incredible,” Kilby said.
He said the company has been able to accommodate growth due to the continued automation of its operation. This has included adding robotics and automated saws and presses.
“That’s the key,” Kilby said. “Employees are getting harder to find, and we’ve been successful in Chatham-Kent at keeping our labor component where it needs to be.”
The Chatham operation currently employs 265 people, but Kilby said it doesn’t mean Dajcor is not hiring.
“We always need a couple more,” he said. “We’re always looking for skilled people – robotics programmers, CNC operators and programmers, millwrights, electricians, technicians – lots of needs here.”
Dajcor has also opened a new plant in Hazzard, Ky., which was recently among the areas impacted by significant flooding in the eastern part of the state.
Kilby said he and his wife went and stayed on site at the Kentucky plant and helped out where they could.
He said the Kentucky factory is back up and running, and now has a second extrusion press completed that is ramping up.
The Kentucky plant will be fairly close in size to Chatham, with 110 people working there, and Kilby expects more staff with be hired into next year to help the company accommodate the growth it’s seeing in the US market.
Dajcor opened 12 years ago in the former Daymond Aluminum building.
“We were planning a big celebration at 10 years, but that darn pandemic came along and ruined all the fun,” Kilby said.
He added open houses are held to acknowledge the efforts of staff and have their families come in and see what they do.