More than 200 protesters rallied at the construction site of the Rockwool plant in Ranson, Jefferson County.
Hundreds of people opposed to Rockwool organized a three-hour protest at the construction site this week.
Rockwool is a Denmark-based manufacturing company that produces stone wool insulation. It’s an alternative to other insulation, such as fiberglass, and it’s touted as ‘green.’ But the way it’s produced is by burning down basalt rock and recycled slag.
A large portion of Jefferson County residents and those from nearby areas have been protesting the plant for the past year citing health concerns; the main one being for students at an elementary school less than a mile away.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Residents in Jefferson County rally at the construction site of the Rockwool plant in Ranson, W.Va. on May 16, 2019.
The protest was organized by the group Resist Rockwool. David Levine, who is the former president of the group, said Rockwool has recently begun vertical construction.
“And [Rockwool believes] that if they show that the walls are going up fast, and this is happening, and this is happening, then at some point we’re going to give up, but hell, walls have fallen down. We’re not going away.”
Rockwool broke ground in June of last year. Since then, there have been several pending lawsuits filed from opposition groups, rallies and an overall division within communities in the Eastern Panhandle.
**Editor’s Note: This story was corrected on May 20, 2019 to reflect David Levine’s role in the Resist Rockwool group.
An 80-year-old maintenance and repair shop in West Virginia is closing its doors due to struggles in the coal and manufacturing industries.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports Kanawha Electric & Machine Co. will close its doors Friday and will lay off the 14 people it employs.
The company’s owner, Tom Sheppard, says many of the company’s biggest clients in the coal industry have been hit hard by the continued shift toward natural gas and renewable energy. He says this has led to a lack of work for the company, which often repairs equipment used in coal mines.
The company started in 1937. In recent years, the company has made repairs to Hoover Dam electrical components and electric motors at the state Capitol Complex.
Two decades have passed since ground was broken on Toyota West Virginia Motor Manufacturing’s engine and transmission plant in Putnam County.
On Sept. 18, 1996, Japanese and American officials planted 10 Japanese maple trees at a ceremony in Buffalo.
The plant opened in 1998 with about 300 employees. The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the plant now employs about 1,100 workers.
A new $90 million production line opened in 2014, increasing the plant’s annual capacity from 500,000 transmissions to 700,000. The plant has expanded eight times since it opened.
The plant was one of the signature achievements of then-U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who was chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and has known Toyota’s founding family since the 1960s.
A new report shows West Virginia has lost more than, 1,100 manufacturing jobs over the past year.
Data from the 2016 West Virginia Manufacturers Register show manufacturing employment in the state dropped by 1.4 percent, or 1,184 jobs, from July 2014 to July 2015. Manufacturers employed a total of 78,144 workers.
Coal industry employment declined by 4 percent during the period. Other sectors posting job losses included industrial machinery and chemical processing.
Employment in the oil and gas industry was virtually unchanged.
Two sectors gained jobs. Employment in primary metals increased by 4.3 percent and medical instruments and related products posted a 1.9 increase.
The register is an industrial database and directory published by Manufacturers News Inc.
In an age of globalization and a shrinking manufacturing sector, two young men in Wheeling are hedging their bets and running with a business idea that first took off in 1854. Hand-forged tools actually took off much earlier, but Warwood Tool has been in the tool-forging business for over 160 years now: hammers, crow-bars, pick-axes, you name it.
The New Guys
While showing me one of the factory machines that shakes the whole town Logan Hartle, the company’s new president, remembered his first time through the factory a couple of years ago:
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Logan Hartle, president of Warwood Tool
“We fell in love with the place,” Hartle said. “My background is in manufacturing. I’ve worked at places like Toyota, but never seen anything like this.”
Hartle is standing in front of the biggest drop forge in the factory. It’s a piece of machinery that uses gravity and a 3,000-pound weight to pound a glowing piece of steel into a tool. Workers throw these tools under the forge between drops. It’s a crazy scene out of a different time.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Phillip Carl, Vice President of Warwood Tool
“Our newest piece of equipment is 30 years old,” said Phillip Carl, vice president and general sales manager.
The two Marshall County boys are both 28 years old. They went to high school together, got degrees at the same time at West Virginia University, and for a while, found work outside of the state. But they decided they wanted to work together somehow, and they wanted to come home.
“We’re having a couple beers one night thinking, ‘What is there to do here?’” Carl remembered. “We forced ourselves to stay until we found something that fit our mold.”
Literally in this case. The young businessmen said they were at the right place at the right time to take over the tool-forging business.
The former president of Warwood Tool, James Haranzo, was once the mayor of Wheeling and spent 50 years with the company. Hartle and Carl believe in addition to their timing being good, Haranzo wanted to make sure the new owners were local, and would take care of the employees.
So with help from family to buy the business, Carl and Hartle signed the paperwork four months ago and retained all 13 current employees. For now, the young businessmen simply hope to maintain while they learn the ins and outs from some of the folks who have been around for a little while longer. Like the plant manager Cliff Thorngate who’s been employed at Warwood Tool for 40 years.
“They’ve brought fresh blood to the place,” Thorngate said. “I think it will be good for us and I think everybody feels that way.”
The Tour
The main building has tall, over-20-foot ceilings, with big windows that look out to Warwood on one side, and the Ohio River on the other. It’s spacious, but full of big machines like the drop forge, and furnaces breathing fire with various pieces of metal sticking out like toothpicks.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
furnace at Warwood Tool where metal is softened before being pounded into a new reality
Thorngate says all the machines work, though not all at once anymore – not since employment was more like 100 people in the 1970s.
He points to one especially giant hand press that was originally used to forge hammers. He says it was brand new when they first got it in 1928. The drop forge is used to make hammers today, but he says they’ve found other uses for the old hand press today. He says it’s a craft, forging tools, and like any other skill, it takes work and practice to perfect.
The steel comes in at one end of the factory, Thorngate explained. From there it’s cut to size, heated, pounded into shape, heated again or tempered, which is when they reheat a piece of steel to bring the grains of steel closer together. Thorngate explains that the tempering process and the fact that the tools are made of one, continuous piece of steel makes the tools exceptionally strong. Eventually, a tool like a crow bar, or a pick ax, or a hammer makes its way to the other end of the factory where it’s painted the traditional Warwood-Tool-blue.
“Years ago all the different tool company’s had their own color,” he said. “Blue was ours.”
The Promise
Company president Logan Hartle says the end result is an American, West Virginian-made quality tool.
But you won’t find Warwood Tool products in big box stores. Company vice president and general sales manager Phillip Carl explains that in the world of tool manufacturing, generally speaking, you either sell to consumers or you sell to industry. The Warwood Tool business model has been to supply railroad, steel, and coal industry companies with tools they need on the job. As those industries decline in the region, Hartle says they’re working to identify new markets.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
“We will always be 100 percent made in America; we’ll always manufacture our of Wheeling, West Virginia; we will always handle with U.S. hickory and ash; and, we will always use our U.S. Union Labor,” said VP Phillip Carl.
“We are global,” Hartle said. “We sell a lot to Canada; we sell a lot to the mid-west. We’ve shipped to Singapore, Austrailia, England. Anybody who’s willing to pay for shipping, we’ll ship to.”
The businessmen are also working to build clientele in the oil and gas industry, and develop a market online. But Carl says some things will always be the same.
“We will always be 100 percent made in America; we’ll always manufacture our of Wheeling, West Virginia; we will always handle with U.S. hickory and ash; and, we will always use our U.S. Union Labor.”
So while other communities might be looking for the next big thing, these two young businessmen are banking on a traditional West Virginia product.
More than 42,000 West Virginians are employed by the manufacturing industry and state lawmakers were told that number is expected to grow in the coming years, but industry leaders say the state needs to focus on educating those workers now.
President of the West Virginia Manufacturer’s Association Karen Price said the problem with the state’s manufacturing industry is not a job shortage, but a labor shortage.
Price said Armstrong, a flooring company located in Randolph County, was recently looking to expand and add more than 150 jobs, but couldn’t find the workforce to fill the positions.
She told lawmakers during an education committee meeting instead, the company is pulling the expansion.
“The average wage in the manufacturing industry is about $45,000 a year,” Price said Tuesday, “and in the chemical industry it’s about $75,000 a year so those are pretty good paying jobs.”
Price said lawmakers need to focus on integrating soft skills like work ethic and communication into the education system and to start introducing kids to the field in middle school to promote the industry.
