Katana hiring workers in Ephrata
An employee at Katana Summit welds at the Ephrata plant Thursday.
EPHRATA - Ephrata wind tower manufacturer Katana Summit is hiring about 120 employees to work on an upcoming job.
It is a four-section tower that requires two shifts to meet the delivery schedule, explained Katana's plant manager Devon Hotchkiss, on Thursday.
The company hired about 40 people and has some people left to bring on, he explained.
Katana held its job fair last week and accepted about 140 applications.
"It went real well," he said.
Job seekers were allowed to tour Katana's site, look at the facility and see what type of job they would be doing.
"It's the first one we had done," Hotchkiss said. "It's important everyone sees where they might be working."
When people see assembly jobs listed, they think of Takata or Genie, he said.
"This is a little bit different," Hotchkiss explained.
The company accepts entry-level workers in some positions, such as assembly, blasting and detailing, which is using a grinder to clean the project.
"We can take entry-level and people can move up from there," he commented. "Obviously, we prefer to have some type of background in fabrication, coating and heavy equipment."
The existing 40 employees at the Ephrata plant are working on another job.
It ends as steel is brought on for the other job.
"It's going good, everyone's excited to get back to work," he said. "2012 is looking like a much better year than 2011."
The market is starting to pick up after the big recession in 2008.
"That kind of hurt us," he said. "We're getting a lot more quotes out there for business, so that is a good sign."
Katana's customers are turbine manufacturers that ask the company to build the towers to their specifications.
There are hundreds of different manufacturers, he said.
"We have built a dozen different tower designs here. We don't build the same thing over and over again, unless it's for the same customer," Hotchkiss commented in part. "The processes are exciting. It's an amazing process and a good business to be in."
For more information, visit www.katana-summit.com/.