Festo announced that it will build a product assembly and distribution center in Mason, Ohio, about 20 miles northeast of Cincinnati along the I-71 technology corridor. The new Festo Regional Service Center, which is scheduled to open in 2015, will double as a facility serving U.S., Canadian and Mexican customers and as a showplace of Festo automation solutions. Festo U.S. headquarters will remain on Long Island.
Ohio was selected as the site for the distribution center because it shortened the average distance to the customers of Festo and thereby will decrease delivery time of products. Plans call for a facility exceeding 170,000 sq ft, a significant expansion over the present facility’s size. The expansion reflects overall North American sales growth.
Festo also anticipates expansion of product assembly activities, which will mean that a wider variety of components, electric and pneumatic motion actuation systems, and control platforms will be available to customers with improved lead times. Like the facility on Long Island, the new center will have Foreign Trade Zone status, which makes it faster and more efficient to support customers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico from a central U.S. location.
“The Festo Regional Service Center in Mason, Ohio, builds on 40 years of service from the Long Island facility and is a natural progression in terms of needing more space and deploying products closer to customers,” said Richard Huss, president and CEO. “One of the most exciting aspects of this major project will be an emphasis on customer visits, a new opportunity to demonstrate on a large-scale Festo integrated automation systems in action.”
Source: Festo
