Upside/Downside: Local Manufacturers Looking to Compete Abroad

Friday, July 11, 2008
Topics: Economy
Download  RSS  Podcast  Short URL  Share

The crunch in the housing markets and the rising price of fuel have left some industries struggling. But local manufacturers say they may see a bright spot: the drop in the value of the dollar means the price of U.S.-made products are more competitive abroad than they've been in decades. Today is the last day of a conference for manufacturers from around the Great Lakes region to talk about how to best compete in the changing market. ideastream®'s Mhari Saito reports on one local company that's trying to do just that.

The sound of workers cutting and assembling metal valves has rattled from the Cleveland warehouse of Superior Products Inc. for over 50 years. The company’s CEO Don Mottinger says they make fittings and valves for compressed gas tanks.

Don Mottinger: This is actually a wall outlet for oxygen for a hospital.

Like many companies, Superior Products has in recent years moved some production to Asia to cut expenses. But with rising fuel and raw materials costs, combined with the falling dollar, things have changed. Mottinger’s company has recently brought production of several parts back to the United States because it’s cheaper.

Don Mottinger: Our brass manufacturer is 100 miles away, we have five platers for all of our medical products within what, 15 miles of us. You start putting all these puzzle pieces together… our plastic from Middlefield… you put those together and you’ve really got a strong base to work from.

That’s a message touted repeatedly this week at the Great Lakes Manufacturing Council Forum. The conference brought together manufacturers from eight states and two Canadian provinces. Ohio Governor Ted Strickland told the conference that while industrial jobs in the Midwest have taken big hits in recent years, the region is still a manufacturing powerhouse.

Ted Strickland: This region’s manufacturing might is something that has sustained us in the past and I believe will sustain us in the future.

The key, says the City of Cleveland’s Regional Economic Director Chris Warren, is finding ways to work across the region as partners to better compete globally.

Chris Warren: The realities of our world today compel communities, states, cities, regions, countries to find and forge stronger and broader alliances. In our neck of the Great Lakes woods, those alliances are being forged.

An alliance with a Cleveland business helped Superior Products at a time when it was seeing its customer base change. It merged with an Eastlake company to manufacture health-related products. Vice President Greg Gens says nearly half of their business now comes from sales to the medical industry.

Greg Gens: Six years ago is when we sat down, we looked at our marketplaces and we were much more industrially-oriented as opposed to medically-oriented at that point in time and we said the demographics support growth in medical. That’s where we need to go.

But Gens says rising materials costs are still eating into growth. Superior Products spent about 40 percent more this year to get the raw materials it needs to make parts. But the drop in the value of the dollar still makes their products a great buy abroad. So company president Mottinger says the company is looking overseas more now for buyers.

Don Mottinger: We just had a big sale in Europe. Because of the dollar we are enormously competitive. We’re trying to take advantage of that just as fast and as hard as we possibly can.

Mhari Saito, 90.3.

Additional Information

Superior Products Inc.