Gun-maker moving to Fort Smith

— Playing the latest movie clips of British spy James Bond and his signature Walther PPK semiautomatic pistol, Arkansas and Fort Smith dignitaries on Thursday attended an announcement that German firearm-maker Carl Walther GmbH’s new U.S.-based operation will locate in Fort Smith.

Walther Arms Inc., the company’s U.S. arm that was created this summer, will move into an existing plant owned by Umarex USA, which manufactures and markets airguns, paintball products, airsoft guns and blank-firing pistols, company officials said Thursday.

Walther Arms Inc. and Umarex USA are private companies owned by Arnsberg, Germany-based PW Group.

Adding the Walther operation to Umarex’s building at Chaffee Crossing in Fort Smith should require as much as $7 million in plant expansion, according to Adam Blalock, president and chief executive officer of Umarex and Walther Arms Inc.

The combined operation hopes to add as many as 70 to 120 new jobs over the next five years and complete the expansion during the same period, company official said. Umarex currently has 72 employees.

“We are absolutely fired up to see Fort Smith become the [U.S.] home for the iconic Walther brand and company,” Blalock said in a news release. A Fort Smith native, Blalock said he hoped to see more manufacturing jobs return to the nation and Fort Smith.

Gov. Mike Beebe called Thursday’s announcement “great news” for a city that has suffered manufacturing job losses in recent years. Whirlpool Corp. laid off about 800 workers in June and shuttered its 2.19 million-squarefoot plant.

As about 150 plant workers and visitors watched during the announcement, a movie clip featuring current James Bond star Daniel Craig in the new release, Skyfall, was shown.

Walther is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of sporting, defense and lawenforcement firearms, according to company officials.

Walther’s U.S. operations had been handled through a strategic partnership with Smith & Wesson firearms manufacturing company of Springfield Mass., Blalock said in an interview Thursday. The transition of operations to the Fort Smith plant is scheduled to start Jan. 1, company officials said.

The decision to create a U.S. Walther company will “allow us to intensity our focus on the U.S. firearms market,” PW Group President Wulf-Heinz Pflaumer said in a news release.

It’s not clear how much new manufacturing of Walter firearms or other arms will take place at the Fort Smith facility.

“We cannot say at this time exactly which products will be manufactured here,” company spokesman Mark Thomas said in an e-mail Thursday. “That is in the strategic planning stages. We are looking at all possibilities to manufacture most any of the product categories in our portfolio ... including airguns, airsoft products and firearms.”

Umarex USA workers currently perform “light assembly and packaging for most of our airguns, firearms and accessories,” Thomas wrote. The company also recovers and refurbishes returned airguns, including paintball and pellet guns.

Umarex has operated since 2008 at Chaffee Crossing at Fort Smith, a growing industrial-commercial-residential development carved from the now-closed Fort Chaffee Army post. When it opened, Blalock said, company officials said they planned to expand.

“We’ve delivered,” he said Thursday. Umarex’s payroll has quadrupled since 2008, he said.

Ivy Owen, Chaffee Crossing’s executive director, said at the announcement that, “Jobs are always good news.” He lamented closures of a large manufacturer such as Whirlpool, but said small businesses with as few as 10 to 15 workers have added jobs in the meantime.

“Sometimes they’ve added two or three jobs. Those jobs are extremely important,” Owen said.

Paul Harvel, president and CEO of the Fort Smith Regional Chamber of Commerce, presented Umarex USA with a check for $10,000 from a chamber economic development fund. The fund was established to help create jobs, Harvel said.

Business, Pages 29 on 11/30/2012

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