Limco Airepair to add 150 jobs to its workforce
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December 16, 2011
By D.R. STEWART, Staff Writer
Tulsa World
12/16/2011
Limco Airepair Inc., the Tulsa aerospace manufacturer, is adding 150 jobs to its 180-member workforce, company and city officials said Thursday.
Limco executives, who will elaborate on the company’s plans at a news conference Friday, said the new jobs are being added as part of the Oklahoma Department of Commerce’s Quality Jobs Program.
Company officials said they don’t know precisely when the new employees will be hired.
Mike Neal, president and CEO of the Tulsa Metro Chamber, said city officials are pleased Limco is reaffirming its commitment to the Tulsa area.
“This is great news for the company and for our region, and we look forward to many more years of continued partnership and success with this tremendous corporate citizen,” he said.
Tulsa Metro Chamber executives said the 150 new jobs will contribute about $16.6 million annually in goods and services to the area economy. That, in turn, will support another $16 million in goods and services, they said.
The new jobs are expected to include welders, machinists, furnace operators, assemblers, stackers and fitters who manufacture and repair Limco’s line of heat exchangers, oil coolers, condensers, fuel heaters and precoolers that have established the 16-year-old company’s reputation in the aerospace industry.
Limco’s customers are half military/half commercial and equal parts manufacturing and maintenance, repair and overhaul, company executives told the Tulsa World a year ago.
“We have re-established ourselves in this industry as a leader,” Limco President Paul Hall said in October 2010. “We’re going to be here for years.”
Two years ago, it wasn’t certain the company would remain in Tulsa.
Limco’s parent, TAT Technologies Ltd. of Gedera, Israel, decided in February 2009 that Limco could be more efficient by combining operations with a sister company in North Carolina. But in July 2009, TAT reversed course and announced Limco would remain in Tulsa.
Since announcing Limco would stay in northeastern Oklahoma, TAT has invested at least $500,000 in capital improvements in Limco’s 100,000-square-foot facility at 5304 S. Lawton Ave., company executives said.
