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Company to hire 70 for plant opening

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By Chelsey Levingston, Staff Writer 7:51 PM Monday, February 20, 2012

MIDDLETOWN — Metal Coaters plans to hire approximately 70 people for its yet-to-open metal coil coating plant in Middletown, the company’s president said.

This is the second piece of welcome jobs news in weeks for the city, following the announcement Minnesota-based Metal-Matic considers Middletown a top site for a steel tubing plant that could eventually bring 200 jobs.

Texas-based Metal Coaters is investing about $15 million a former metal coating plant it purchased in 2010 on Yankee Road, with hopes to have it running within a year, said President John Kuzdal. In preparation for the anticipated opening, a job fair will be held 9 a.m. to noon March 10, at Johnston Hall, Miami University Middletown, 4200 N. University Boulevard. The company is looking for skilled operators, maintenance and material handling workers.

“The reason to have the job fair is to just make sure we have everybody lined up and registered,” Kuzdal said.

Metal Coaters is one division of Houston, Texas-based NCI Group that purchased the Middletown property at 2400 Yankee Road. NCI strategically made the purchase of the former metal coating plant to hold until a time it made sense to open. Now with another one of NCI Group’s divisions constructing two building product plants in Illinois and Virginia, it made sense to begin hiring for the Middletown plant to supply them, Kuzdal said.

The Middletown plant will apply paint to metal that will supply NCI component and metal building product plants that make roofing, siding and other building materials, he said. Middletown could supply facilities in New York, Indiana, Kentucky, Iowa, and the two new ones being built in Illinois and Virginia, he said.

“The real thing that creates the critical mass are the two new facilities being built, which will be finished by 2013,” he said.

NCI will use a hiring process similar to the one used about a year ago by SunCoke Energy for its Middletown coke plant. Workforce One of Butler County will begin accepting and screening applications for NCI after the job fair.

The plant does not yet have a scheduled opening date because the date is tied to the progress of the construction of the company’s other plants it will supply.

Metal Coaters will not take applications at the job fair, but job seekers will receive information about the company and how to apply and be able to ask questions, he said.

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.

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