Milwaukee Tool is opening a new manufacturing facility in Grenada, Mississippi.
According to press materials, the new factory will be “equipped with state-of-the-art technology and manufacturing capabilities,” and will “initially produce Milwaukee’s robust line of accessories,” including Sawzall blades.
Milwaukee adds that the location “will expand into additional product lines over time.”
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The company says they “invested more than $60 million into the more than 500,000 square foot facility.” The new location “will employ more than 800 people.”
Milwaukee says that they “invested more than $250 million over the last five years and employ more than 4,000 people” in Mississippi, and that in the same give year period they have invested $675 million in expansion projects in the USA.
Milwaukee says that they have “a workforce of over 10,000 in the U.S. alone.”
They have additional domestic presences in Mississippi (Greenwood, Olive Branch, and Jackson), Wisconsin (Mississippi, Brookfield, Menomonee Falls, Milwaukee, West Bend, Mukwonago, and Sun Prairie), Tennessee (Cookeville), Illinois (Chicago), and Indiana (Greenwood).
Nearly 7 years ago, Milwaukee’s Group President Steven Richman – now CEO of their parent company – pledged further expansion and creation of new USA jobs. It looks like Richman and Milwaukee Tool has been making good on that promise.
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Al
800 people in a half million square feet? Surely, they have more concrete plans than “Sawzall blades, and stuff…”?
CA
Maybe they will be making some of the hand tools.
Stuart
You can’t expect them to give away all of their secrets.
Al
I’m imagining Toughbuilt Stacktech being manufacutured alongside black Packout gear. In perfect harmony. In Amurica.
And delivered before 2026.
We can dream, right?
TomD
I seem to recall that every expansion they’ve done has been for “sawzall blades” in the first announcement. Maybe it’s the easiest thing to get spun up.
Nathan
Did they say when? I drove past this today and wondered what they were doing with it. Parking lots vacant and it’s been empty for over a year if I recall correctly.
Hope they start moving stuff soon.
.oh and the olive branch location is mostly a shipping depot that I’m aware of. Unless that’s changed recently.
Also heard Grenada was going to build ope items at some point
Joe E.
At this point, I would love to see SBD sell the Craftsman brand to Milwaukee so they can show them how it’s done.
Goodie
Here’s hoping SBD rethinks that and learns how to make US manufacturing happen. I lived in Colorado Springs in the mid 2010s. Western Forge was a local point of pride, and it was very sad to see Craftsman’s contract end with WF in the early part of this decade.
ITCD
WF lost a lot of business with Craftsman, but there was still a lot of potential there. Other companies were going through them for some things, and they could have tried getting back into the market directly as well.
Given that Ideal ditched them, ditched Pratt-Read with their over 200 years of history, and dumped off SK to be scrapped and completely changed, I feel like the problem wasn’t really Craftsman nor Western itself… it was the folks at the top. Losing Craftsman made for a big challenge, but not an impossible one, to overcome.
Rob
Western Forge was a massive facility running at 15% production capacity. It was bleeding money. The mistake at the top was ever buying the 3 in the first place. SK was dead and gone and they dumped a ton of money into basically building it from scratch . WF was inches away from going bankrupt when acquired. What they got from Pratt & Reed was an instruction manual on how to make handles.
TomD
I just want that so I stop getting excited by red in the store and then realizing it’s crapsman.
Saulac
What trades/industries Milwaukee can expand into with American high production cost? Regarding construction, I can think of the finishing (?) trade. Cordless airless paint sprayers?
Tom
You’d be surprised what can be affordably manufactured domestically. It really depends on the supply chain and all of the sub-suppliers for each component. That is one of the main advantages of manufacturing in China and SE Asia – the sheer scale and breadth of the manufacturing ecosystem that allows for even complex finished goods to be made at scale. But there are plenty of items that can be made here with readily available raw materials and sub-contracted components and still be made more cheaply vs. importing and paying freight and duties.
Ben
You hit the nail on the head regarding supply chain availability. It has withered over the past few decades and will take time to build back up. Once it’s built back up, we will be more competitive with being able to produce the sort of complex goods that China / SEA can currently easily produce.
Brian
We have to have the right climate to grow supply chains and manufacturing here. I swear at times I think the government is actively trying to kill all manufacturing in the US. If you hear people blame the wages call BS, wages are a small part of the total cost in most manufacturing facilities. It’s mostly the regulations, environmental hoops, TAXES and that’s before you get into the State and local circus. Even now we see companies leaving very blue states to red states because of the hostile environment towards businesses. If the federal government got serious we could have more good manufacturing jobs which would raise wages for everyone. I’m not getting into a left vs right thing because at the federal level they both suck and are both to blame.
Stuart
It really depends on the type of tool and target users. It all comes down to cost. American shoppers’ spending habits tend to convey that lower prices are more important to them than domestic manufacturing.
I spoke to Milwaukee a little more about their USA-made hand tool production, and what led them to start with electrical hand tools. Some of the core target audiences for these tools, such as union electricians, put a high priority on USA production and sourcing.
When you get into other tool categories, a majority of users don’t care, and if USA production means considerably higher prices, that’s likely to hurt sales.
Look at what happened to Malco and their Eagle Grip locking pliers.
Milwaukee makes a lot of power tool accessories here, such as most if not all Sawzall blades and Hole Dozer hole saws. These accessories have a shorter production line with fewer steps compared to say a cordless drill that involves many very dissimilar components.
ITCD
There’s a lot of manufacturing still hanging out in blue states. I think California qualifies as a blue state for sure, and Nupla, Martinez, Stiletto, Pro America, and tons more tool companies are still based there, as well as a ton of other companies. The taxes are levied on the net, not the gross, and are 21% right now. Just a few years ago it was 35% and companies still survived, because again that tax is on the bottom line, not on gross receipts. They also pay social security taxes and Medicare taxes equivalent to what the employees pay in, which is part of their payroll tax in addition to FUTA which helps fund unemployment benefits.
You’re also off base about labor cost. The wages a person receives is generally about half of their overall compensation package — the employer pays the lions share of insurance plans, vacation/PTO, chips in on 401(k) plans, bonuses, etc. Overall, labor cost accounts for about 25-35% of total sales, so a company pulling a billion a year will be paying $250M-$350M a year typically just for the labor. That’s not a small percentage.
And since there are higher costs to do business here as you can’t pay peanuts, the prices charged must also be higher. Some consumers are willing to pay those higher costs. Many are not.
fred
One of the businesses that I had an interest in (with other partners) did and still does manufacture in a very-Blue State – where costs all around are far in excess of the national average. Being in a suburban area – environmental and other concerns were also factored into our costs. What set us apart were our reputation for high quality and problem solving for a loyal base of customers. We often won bids not on the lowest price but on a lowest evaluated price when things like expected MTBF were factored in. We were able to deliver and get repeat business because of a well-paid and equally loyal skilled employee base. Thankfully we never produced anything that would have to be sold at retail thru outlets like Walmart or Home Depot. At the mass-market level the American consumer often talks a good story – but then when they open their wallets the outcome may be that low price is the driver.
Kentucky fan
Channelock, Klein, and wright tool build top notch tools in this country everyday for reasonable prices. Snap on industrial (williams) is also pretty reasonable as well. I just bought a set of super combo wrenches from Williams for maybe 30% more than harbor freight icon and they are too on the line tools.
Kentucky fan
*top of the line. Autocorrect got me
Goodie
The announcement of “Sawzall blades” is actually pretty interesting to think through. Most of the manufacturing process for that is highly automated (laser cut steel, roboticized sharpening and painting, etc.) The actual labor cost is probably fairly low per blade. Higher US labor costs are be offset by that low unit labor input, and is offset by reduced shipping, relief from import duties, and shorter supply chain to deliver to US retailers. For US manufacturing to be competitive, all of these inputs need to be able to compete. The downside is that this sort manufacturing isn’t going to drive the job count we had in the industrial area, but I’m pretty excited to see this happen.
Goodie
*industrial era*
KMR
Laser cutting blade blanks? I would have though they’re stamping blanks out of presses fed by coils of strip steel, which is a fairly automated and efficient process.
ITCD
I agree, they’re very likely done with a press, could even have a continuous die set where the blank is punched, and then the saw teeth set, so the part coming out the other end just needs sharpened (if the profile requires it), painted/marked, and packaged.
Goodie
Quite a few circular saws are laser-cut (which are much more expensive), but the overall point is that the labor contribution to cost on those blade products are a small part of the overall manufacturer’s cost.
Farkleberry
This is super, but why does the entrance look like Arizona?
Hopefully there are are some Magnolias and Camellias on the periphery.
Scott
Are they shutting down wherever they make their current Sawzall blades? Or is this going to be an additional facility that makes them?
Stuart
I don’t think so. They’ve also been introducing more and more new styles of blades, it could be they reached capacity.
Doresoom
I drove past this a few months ago, and was wondering what the story was – there were zero cars in the parking lot that I could see from the highway.
Plain+grainy
Grenada is the county seat of Grenada county. Population just over 13,000 people. About 85 miles SouthWest of Tupelo Miss. About a third of the way down from the top of the state.