Article courtesy of Las Cruces Sun-News
By Brook Stockberger
LAS CRUCES – L&M Radiator Inc. is moving its El Paso manufacturing facility to Las Cruces as it seeks room to expand, and those interested in a job with the company can meet with representatives on Thursday at Dona Ana Community College’s Career Expo 2011. The job fair will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the school’s central campus at 3400 S. Espina St., in rooms 75, 77 and 79.
L&M Radiator President Dan Chisholm said that the company had closed the El Paso facility for a while, but reopened and rehired its employees. Now it needs more room and turned its eyes to Las Cruces. “We are doing some limited production there now,” Chisholm said. “Our business has seen a tremendous amount of growth over the last year.”
He said initial reports that the company could hire up to 200 workers might be too high of a number, but that as his company works with others in the area, it is conceivable the overall job impact could reach eventually that level. For now, the more than 60 workers at the El Paso facility are being offered the chance to work in Las Cruces.
“We’ll see who is willing to relocate and how many stay with us,” Chisholm said. “I hope they all do, they’re very good employees.” He said L&M will need to hire workers in Las Cruces as well.
“(We’ll need) welders, fabricators, assembly people – anybody who has a mechanical background,” Chisholm said. “Certainly we do a lot of training.” Las Crucen Nick Guerrero said he plans to go talk to the company on Thursday. “I know mechanical (work). I used to work for the NASA test facility doing all sorts of stuff,” Guerrero said.
The Minnesota-based company that manufactures large radiators and other cooling systems plans to set up a location in Las Cruces in the building that used to house the Coca-Cola Bottling Co. at 2100 S. Valley Dr.
L&M Radiator, which also has locations in Mexico, Australia and Germany, makes cooling systems for heavy machinery, buses, oil field equipment and others. It sells products under the brand name Mesabi flexible core heat exchangers.
More information about the company can be found online at mesabi.com.
Brook Stockberger can be reached at (575) 541-5457.
