Into high gear: Va. Beach plant getting big expansion

VIRGINIA BEACH

The story of how a Virginia Beach manufacturing plant cornered the market on a growing segment of the U.S. auto industry begins more than 150 years ago in Germany's Black Forest.

With cuckoo clocks.

There would be no IMS Gear on Progress Lane had a young entrepreneur named Johann Morat not watched his father crafting spindle drills for clockmakers. He turned what he’d learned into a business making gears and other precision industrial parts.

Johann Morat & Sons eventually transformed into a global business called IMS Gear, which today is as much a technology company as a manufacturer. It just happens to still specialize in gears.

Its Virginia Beach plant, opened in 2000, is undergoing a $25 million expansion, thanks to some major successes of late.

The mechanisms made there, which allow power seats to move forward and backward, can be found in approximately six out of 10 cars on the road today.

Guenter Weissenseel, president of IMS Gear Virginia Inc., recently cut the ribbon of a 112,000-square-foot building off London Bridge Road. The new facility triples IMS Gear's local footprint.

The Virginia Beach operation now employs 210 people. Its business will double as a result of product demand in the next two to three years, Weissenseel said.

The local operation is among 13 factories within privately owned IMS Gear. There are nine others in the home country, Germany, and one each in China, Mexico and Gainesville, Ga. Combined, their products generate about $470 million in annual sales.

The company decided to expand in Virginia Beach for a number of reasons, with logistics being No. 1, Weissenseel said. Moving all of the fragile and expensive equipment a long distance could have jeopardized ambitious production levels.

With incentives from Virginia Beach's Department of Economic Development, IMS Gear worked with the Miller Group, its local landlord, to construct a new building modeled after its headquarters in Germany. Over many months, employees and contractors shifted operations from Seahawk Circle about a mile down the road.

"We didn't miss a beat," Weissenseel said.

IMS Gear is now fully moved in to the Progress Lane building. Machines there cut steel into 50,000 spindle nuts daily. Others mold as many plastic worm gears each day. They’re then assembled into the end products: horizontal drive mechanisms for power seats.

Workers on the factory floor attend to the machines and make sure the process runs smoothly.

Machine operator Vivian Yousif of Virginia Beach has worked for IMS Gear Virginia for 11 years. She oversees assembly of gear boxes, one after another.

"From here, it goes to the next machine and to the next machine," she said.

Weissenseel said the factory is "running 7-24; we don't stop."

One of the company's biggest challenges is finding qualified labor, he said.

Technicians who can troubleshoot problems are particularly in demand.

IMS Gear began an apprenticeship program with Tidewater Community College this year, providing lab space, materials and machinery to train workers. Also, several IMS Gear employees are enrolled in an apprenticeship program at neighboring Stihl Inc., another German company and a manufacturer of outdoor power equipment.

IMS Gear's management team is looking ahead to new products that may eventually be made in Virginia Beach. But the company knows gears aren't going out of style. Not as long as there's a demand for things that move.

Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, [email protected]

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