A bulging order book for office furniture has a New Liskeard manufacturer embarking on a plant expansion.
Site excavation began in mid-September on a half-million-dollar expansion to create more production room at Three H Furniture Systems.
Company president Roy Dittmann said a new addition is being grafted onto their 40,000-square-foot shop to enlarge their shop by about 10 per cent and add 10 new jobs to their 80-person workforce.
“It’s not a huge expansion,” he said. “We just needed more room.”
Included in the investment is $150,000 for new equipment in the form of a fourth point-to-point machine. These are programmable CNC machines that perform the drilling and routing to make the various components for furniture assembly.
Dittmann expects the new addition to be “roof tight” within a few weeks, allowing staff and machinery to start moving in before the snow flies.
The general contractor is Rivard Brothers with Pederson Construction handling the foundation work.
“What we’re seeing is an increasing demand for a lot of the new products we’ve been offering,” said Dittmann. ”Our lead time is starting to creep out. We have to get more out of the building and invest more in our facility.”
The company, which garnered a provincial Global Traders Award in 2006, has always done well in the U.S., but Dittmann is encouraged that demand is coming from all regions on large commercial and institutional projects including one at the University of British Columbia.
“It’s across all product lines,” said Dittmann. “We’re not seeing as much of single private offices anymore; it’s more of the larger open plan that we’re seeing the growth in.
“We have a height-adjustable line that’s getting a fair amount of activity.”
Dittmann is the son of Heinz Dittmann, one of three co-founders who established the company in 1973.
Over the years, Three H has evolved from making European-style residential furniture into a leading designer and manufacturer of high-quality executive office furniture, work stations and other office accessories, much of it customized.
The company’s work received some accolades in June at the NEOCON design exposition in Chicago, winning the prestigious HIP Award from Interior Design Magazine for its Rescape office wall tiles.
“It’s really hard to to say (if the award translates into sales) but they generate a lot of interest,” said Dittmann. “We’ve gotten a lot of calls from the customers and design firms that have looked at us because of it. It does create some buzz and some interest.”
