Premium content from Wichita Business Journal – by Daniel McCoy
Date: Friday, July 15, 2011, 5:00am CDT
Related:
Manufacturing
A new contract with Hawker Beechcraft Corp. will help Capps Manufacturing grow its work force
by about 15 percent and signals that Hawker is making good on its stated intention to keep work
local.
Hawker Beechcraft Corp. is outsourcing to the Wichita company some of the work it had previously
announced would leave its local plant. Capps Manufacturing’s vice president, Ron Capps, says the
work will require him to add 31 employees.
The contract with Hawker will also allow Capps, which is purchasing equipment from Hawker, to
build a 27,000-square-foot, $1.3 million expansion at its plant.
Capps says work on the building, which is being designed and built by Smith Construction, should
begin next week.
The Wichita City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a five-year, 80 percent property tax
abatement on the new equipment and additional building space.
Capps says he will be hiring 31 employees for the Hawker work. More could be added if orders
pick up, he says.
The work and equipment being moved are related to stretch-forming — shaping sheet metal using
tension and heat.
The company had been talking with Hawker since the first of the year. Capps calls stretch-forming
his company’s core competency, which, combined with its relationship on other Hawker work,
made him feel the contract could be won.
“We felt strongly that we had a shot at it,” he says. “And they were very cooperative and very
aggressive in working with us.”
Capps can’t say whether any of the workers he will hire will come straight from Hawker because
he isn’t sure how many of those will be available.
He says the machinery he is buying from Hawker, including a 750-ton press, a 400-ton skin stretch
and a heat-treat furnace, can be used on work for other customers as well.
Move makes sense
Hawker spokesperson Nicole Alexander says the project reflects the company’s commitment to
try to keep work local.
“This is a good example of Hawker Beechcraft utilizing Kansas-based suppliers for additional
work,” she says.
In the case of Capps Manufacturing, the move just makes sense, says Cecil Miller, owner of Aero
Business Group in Wichita. His company helps suppliers win contracts with manufacturers but
didn’t work on the Capps deal, he says.
Given the size of the equipment involved — and the fact that Capps Manufacturing is well-known
in the industry for its stretch-forming — it would have been impractical to move the work very far.
Capps’ cost to buy the equipment and have it installed is $821,000, according to public documents
filed with the city.
“That’s the reason (Hawker) is keeping it local,” Miller says. “It would have been too expensive to
move that work to Mexico. … And Capps already has the capability.”