Print production firm Quad/Graphics, Pewaukee, WI, will begin building a plant in Oklahoma City in spring 2001.
After a one-year site search that included several Western U.S. cities, Quad/Graphics selected Oklahoma City primarily because its geographic centrality made sense for the company's distribution needs.
The plant site is close to I-40, an east-west interstate that bisects the country, and the city is a two-hour drive from Quad/Graphics-owned Parcel/Direct, a ground-residential parcel delivery business in Dallas. Oklahoma City is also a one-day drive from its production plants in Georgia and Wisconsin. Available and affordable labor as well as reasonably priced utilities were other reasons for the selection of the city.
When the plant opens in spring 2002, the company plans to expand its core business of magazine and catalog print jobs.
“The new plant gives us the chance to better serve [magazine/catalog clients] from a distribution standpoint,” said Claire Ho, spokeswoman for Quad/Graphics. “And it gives us a better opportunity to market our services in the Southwest.”
Quad/Graphics plans to spend at least $65 million to begin operations in the projected 193,000-square-foot building, which will house pre-press and finishing machines used in the web-offset printing process employed by the firm.
The company plans to expand the facility to 1 million square feet during the next four years and eventually to 2 million square feet with more than 24 presses and 40 pieces of finishing equipment.
Ho said the plant could cost the firm as much as $225 million during the next four years. Employment at the plant could grow from 100 people during the first year of operation to more than 600 people by 2005.
The facility will be the company's 10th plant in the United States and its 14th overall.
