Kimm Lauterbach, president and CEO of REDI Cincinnati, left, Gordie Follin, chief product officer at Beehive Industries, middle, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and J.P. Nauseef, president and CEO of JobsOhio, far right.
Beehive Industries, an aerial manufacturer defense company, plans to expand its operations at its locations south of Dayton and add more than 200 new jobs.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Beehive Industries, JobsOhio and REDI Cincinnati announced the $70 million investment by the company on Tuesday, July 2, at the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom.
“Beehive Industries’ decision to grow in Southwest Ohio demonstrates once again that our state is the best place in America to do business and the best place to strengthen our national defense,” said Gov. Mike DeWine. “This investment puts our state at the forefront of building the engines our military needs, and we’ll be doing it faster than anyone thought possible.”
Beehive Industries, which has a research center located in Loveland and is headquartered in Colorado, said it plans to design engines for additive manufacturing and build a fully integrated U.S. supply chain with “end-to-end, in-house capabilities,” to allow it to build the engines quicker.
“Our success is fundamentally tied to the caliber of the workforce we are building in Southwest Ohio,” said Gordie Follin, chief product officer at Beehive Industries.
Beehive’s Frenzy engine is entering full-rate production, backed by a $29.7 million U.S. Air Force contract.
In June, the company announced plans to more than double its metal additive manufacturing capacity with the single-largest publicly disclosed purchase of EOS metal printers, according to the company.
It acquired two Greater Cincinnati precision machine shops – Able Tool Corporation and Planet Products Corporation – establishing its Production Machining Center of Excellence in the Cincinnati region, according to a release. These combined investments are building the manufacturing system required to produce more than 8,000 engines annually.
“Beehive is doing exactly the kind of advanced, mission-critical manufacturing that defines Ohio’s aerospace and defense advantage — and doing it at the speed the customer requires,” said JobsOhio President and CEO J.P. Nauseef. “In Ohio, companies can dream it, build it, test it and scale it, and this expansion is proof that the nation’s number one state for business is where America accelerates defense production.”
The project will pursue a Job Creation Tax Credit from the Ohio Department of Development at an upcoming Tax Credit Authority meeting. JobsOhio also plans to provide assistance for the project, which will be made public after a final agreement is made
