Quad Graphics expanding quickly in OKC
Great news for a newcomer to the OKC market. They seem to be doing so well here, they will eventually locate the largest printing facility in the world here.
--------------
Fruitful move: Quad/Graphics is growing quickly on Oklahoma soil
Posted: Monday, September 27, 2004
Fruitful move: Quad/Graphics is growing quickly on Oklahoma soil
By Steven E. Wedel
writers@okcbusiness.com
Farmers have known for decades how fertile the central Oklahoma soil can be. But it would have been difficult for any almanac to predict just how quickly a new Quad/Graphics printing facility would grow once planted in Oklahoma City.
The Oklahoma City plant of the Sussex, Wis.-based print giant opened less than one year ago – in October 2003 – in a plant that was about 200,000 square feet at 6801 S. Sunnylane.
This past February the company announced plans to expand the facility by 137,000 square feet and about 100 employees. But even that won’t be the end of the growth spurt.
“We plan to be at 761,000 square feet by the end of this year,” said Steve Horning, Oklahoma City plant manager.
He said the company currently employs 275 people at the Oklahoma City facility, but that employment could be up to 350 by the end of this year.
Long-term plans for Oklahoma City are even grander. Horning said Quad intends to expand the plant to about 2 million square feet and employ between 1,000 and 1,500 workers, making the Oklahoma City plant the largest printing facility in the world.
The local plant began operations with 26-year Quad/Graphics’ client Newsweek magazine. The plant now prints Sports Illustrated, People, Time and Entertainment Weekly magazines and soon will begin production of a new project.
“We’ll begin printing the new version of Life magazine in mid-September,” Horning said. The revived magazine will now be a free weekend supplement to many major newspapers. Horning said his plant will print about 1.5 million copies of each weekly issue.
Those copies will be printed on new Gravure presses. Initially, the Oklahoma City plant was equipped only with web offset presses. Horning said the Gravure presses are better for large jobs.
“Gravure presses print off a cylinder engraved by a diamond-tip stylus,” he said. For longer print runs, Horning said the new presses offer cleaner copy.
Horning said the Oklahoma City facility, Quad’s first venture west of the Mississippi River, is attracting more clients to the company.
“There’s been a lot of interest, particularly in the southwest and from the West Coast,” he said.
Negotiations are ongoing with potential clients, but Horning could not name any of those firms at this time.
Horning and his wife, also a Quad employee, transferred to Oklahoma City from Wisconsin about 15 months ago, he said. He said he and the company are happy to be in Oklahoma.
“We’re extremely pleased with the city,” he said, adding that start-up help provided by the local and state government and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce were very valuable. He said the quality of employees the company is hiring has been very good, too.
“The workforce and work ethic of the people in Oklahoma has been very positive,” Horning said.
That’s the kind of thing Roy Williams, president and CEO of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, wants to hear. He said the chamber is now using Quad’s Oklahoma City success to attract other industries to the metro.
“We use Quad as our poster child,” Williams said. “We even try to have prospects we’re working with meet with executives from Quad.” Williams said Quad has set an example for how other companies view the Oklahoma City market.
“Their willingness to make an investment in our community shows other companies they can have market access to the western part of the country form here,” he said. “And, since Quad/Graphics is a state-of-the-art technology company, it shows that state-of-the-art companies are welcome here.”
To date, Williams said Quad/Graphics has invested about $130 million in central Oklahoma.
“That’s a very strong statement on a company’s ability to succeed in this marketplace,” Williams said.
Bookmarks