Castle Country Business and Expansion and Retention Press Release
One of the keys to strong economic growth in rural areas is having people that step up and develop successful businesses. On March 28, the Castle Country Business Expansion and Retention general board heard from John Houston and his son Bob as they spoke about Intermountain Electronics and the now international company that was founded by John in the mid-1980s. The company manufactures switchgear, pump skids, portable power, longwall controls, underground power controls, and provides engineering services. IE serves data centers, oil & gas, mining, utility, and other industrial sectors.
“We are doing this presentation to inform the community about our growth and to work with it to insure we can hire people locally,” said John Houston as he began the presentation. “We employ people from both Carbon and Emery County with over a third of our workforce being from Emery. We are expanding those efforts now to areas outside the immediate one, to help people to come live, work and play in our area.”
Houston went on to explain that when the company was founded in 1985 it was mostly focused on the coal industry.
“The coal industry was my background and that is what we knew,” he said. “We were able to fill some voids that we saw that the coal industry had. We had some very substantial growth into the early 2000s and then there was a drastic turn down in the coal mining industry. However, there was a big boom going on in the oil and gas business, so that became a target of ours.”
Much of that activity was in Colorado, so with those changes, the company opened an additional factory in Denver.
“It was a big boom and we were able to fill some voids there as well,” he stated. “Like coal, it is a very cyclical business. While it helped us to expand, it went from a matter of full on boom to the bottom of a market in a matter of months. We then looked for other opportunities to expand again. That is when we got into renewables and the utility business. That is a big part of what we do now.”
Houston said the company practices what it preaches, in that they are presently almost at 100 percent solar power in all their factories. In fact, at the very time he was speaking to the group, solar cells were being installed in the Price factory that day. That change to solar is already true with the plants in Ohio and Illinois that the company owns as well as the one in Denver.
He showed a series of slides that demonstrated the growth of the company and indicated that even though they have expanded their business, the original business of working with mining interests is still very strong and in fact had “record sales and growth last year.” Now, with that and the added industries, many of them in high technology fields, the firm is growing and very stable.
“We have participated in four of the five largest renewable projects in the world with equipment that was manufactured right here in Price,” he explained. “Because of our affiliation with major companies, we have gone all over the globe.”
The company is growing their facilities at almost all their locations because of the advent of working with companies such as Facebook and Google. For instance in the next couple of years the facility in Price will almost double in size, along with the other plants which either have already expanded or are doing so in the near future. Houston said that IE may well double their overall business by 2026. This growth leads to some pain for the gain, particularly in the area of being able to find qualified employees at the local level.
The company is encouraging youth in the community to move into careers with the company. They have been doing this for a number of years by employing with high school students as interns. Now however, in a team up with Utah State University Eastern the company is going one step beyond that.
“We are very excited about this program that we are launching and our relationship with USU Eastern,” he said. “The labor pool here is the only one that is consistent and stable for our plant in Price. We want to encourage students to continue their education and to experience college life. We want to step in to support students particularly those who don’t have the resources to attend college and advance their education.”
The new program allows interns to work at the facility, with mentoring and instruction, all the time getting paid while they gain college credit for it up to six hours per semester. In the past this program has run at a smaller level. But the ramp up to include more people will help to accommodate the companies growth. Houston said that with USU’s cooperation they are now recruiting at high schools in Green River, Moab, Duchesne county and Richfield. Interns from these programs would live on campus, have access to the cafeteria and experience the totality of campus life.
“It has often been hard to go to places like those and to get parents convinced to send their kids to Price for work,” he explained. “But now they can combine that work with the chance for their children to attend college.”
Under the new program, the cost of having them come to USU Eastern and to work at IE will be covered by the company, along with the wage that the student will get for working at the plant.
“It will be 100 percent paid for by us,” stated Houston unequivocally. “We want to provide a path for these young people to advance not only in our company and toward degrees but it will hopefully provide a great labor pool within our community.”
Brad Watson, the Director of Community and Campus Engagement at the school then spoke about the joint program and the support that the university has for it.
“By 2026 IE is going to need 286 more employees to support it’s expansion,” he told the group. “The goal is that these students do this internship, have support while doing it, perform really well and finally end up with a full time job at IE while having overall educational gains.”
Students and parents interested in the program can either contact Watson at USU Eastern or Intermountain Electronics for information.
The next BEAR meeting will take place on April 25, at the Jennifer Leavitt Student Center Alumni Room on the USU Eastern Campus. It will start at 8 a.m. and the speaker will be Brock Johansen who is heading up a recently established economic development group for the area.