Bainbridge Manufacturing CEO Abraham Levy gave an update on the current state of the company Thursday with a tour of the facility and Q&A session with local officials from the Decatur County Board of Commissioners, Bainbridge City Council and the Industrial Development Authority.
According to Levy, three to five employees will be working on location in the coming weeks. Their responsibilities will include cleaning and maintenance of the machinery already on Bainbridge Manufacturing’s production floor. More equipment will be arriving in April, May and June as well.
Full-scale production is scheduled to begin in August.
“That’s when we’ll have a full first shift,” Levy said, which will be around 80 workers.
The furnace, which is the key machinery in the plant, will be ready to operate by then. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be any production between now and then. Equipment will be arriving and need setting up, and Levy said there are other components that workers can build and ship out that do not need the furnace.
An example would be bent tubing, a piece Bainbridge Manufacturing is contracted to supply, which Levy said would begin production in April.
Bainbridge-Decatur County Industrial Development Authority Executive Director Rick McCaskill said as more machinery arrives over the coming months, representatives from the companies delivering them would be able to train Bainbridge Manufacturing workers on how to assemble and operate them, giving the company a core nucleus of employees who are knowledgeable about the machinery.
“The people hired over the next few months will understand how that works,” McCaskill said.