Brown visits century-old Ideal Electric Co., lauds Mansfield firm for buying American

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, visited his hometown Friday specifically to tour the Ideal Electric Co. at 330 E. First St., still making and servicing electric motors and generators as the plant did more than a century ago.

"It's great to meet a number of people who have such longtime ties to Richland, and Crawford and Ashland and Knox and Huron and Morrow counties and to see what they're doing in this company which has a very rich history of thousands of workers which helped us win World War II," Brown told media. "It's been around 100 years and was down to almost nobody, now building back up to 60 people."

"What we hope we can do working with them with the Buy America Rules which Sen. (Rob) Portman and I got in a bill a couple years ago, there's going to more opportunities for companies like this that don't just say they buy American but actually do," Brown said.

Steel used at Ideal Electric comes from Cleveland Cliffs in Cleveland.

"It's what we ought to be doing as a country," the senator said.

Brown said he visited the plant many years ago but had not been back inside the massive plant "since it got smaller and is now building back up.

"You can see people in there. I talk about the dignity of work and everybody that works hard, whether with their hands or their brains, should make a decent living and this company is doing that. It's going to grow and it's going to be more people in Mansfield and the area have opportunity," Brown said.

Brown said he was most impressed by the pride he saw in talking with people.

"One man was cutting steel after it was machined by Brown who coaches football, coaches Madison Rams in football he told me," Brown said.

"You think about this path of steel from Cleveland to here to put into a motor and wherever it ends up, the people doing it clearly have pride in their work," Brown said.

Ideal Electric's first invoice was dated May 28, 1903

The Ideal Electric Company was founded in 1903 as a manufacturer of street car motors, Hyundai Ideal Electric became a market leader in the design and manufacture of made-to-order medium- and high-powered motors and generators and controls.

The first invoice issued by Ideal Electric Co., 330 E. First St., was dated May 28, 1903. Ideal delivered its first 10-horsepower motor, costing $77, to the Kieckhefer Elevator Co. in Milwaukee.

In 2017, Hyundai Ideal Electric Co.'s decision to halt production at its 330 E. First St. operation brought one of the city's oldest companies to an end after 114 years. According to the WARN Act notice filed with the state Office of Workforce Development in Columbus, Hyundai said it would lay off its remaining employees by July 12, 2017, the News Journal reported at the time.

In 2017, Ideal Electric Company, formerly owned by Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. of South Korea, announced that the Mansfield company has been wholly acquired by a privately held affiliate of Gulf Electroquip Ltd. of Houston, Texas.

Ideal Electric is a globally established American manufacturer of electric motors and generators, switchgear and control systems for all applications including industrial, oil, gas and petrochemical, water and infrastructure, pulp and paper, air handling, marine, mining, power generation and renewable energy. The founding team, led by entrepreneurs George Jackson, Jim Petersen, Jr. and Nicholas Phillips, is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

On Friday, Petersen, the owner of the local plant, and Phillips, vice president, welcomed Brown and media to the plant, known worldwide for its generators and electric motors.

Petersen, who lives in Houston, Texas and visits the Mansfield plant about a week each month, said the generators being built or serviced go into power generation.

"We have some units out there that are dam generators, hydro generator. We've got some generators for natural gas turbines. We've got motors out there today that are running heavy industry whether it be cement, big fans, compressors, powering heavy industry both here in Ohio domestically and actually we send quite a bit overseas," Petersen said.

Owner bought company because of 'solid, heartland people'

Petersen said the plant is growing really well with the support of the community.

"One of the reasons I was interested in buying Ideal was actually because of the people in Mansfield. I went to restaurants here when we were talking about buying it and I listened. I could hear the people, I could hear these were solid, heartland people and since I live in Texas I wasn't going to be able to do it without the people," Petersen said.

"The factory was here but it was the people who were the most important thing and that has been overwhelmingly returned as a positive venture," he said.

Phillips said Brown is very interested in and very supportive of domestic manufacturing and particularly in defense and decarbonization, all of which Ideal Electric plays a role in.

"We're doing a lot more service. The previous owners being a big conglomerate were very much interested in new equipment and being a manufacturer of new equipment because the service side is a totally different business and is a challenge," said Phillips, who also lives in Houston.

"But we come from the service business and we have the appetite for that and it's a real significant portion of the business now. There's new equipment, new build and then supporting the life cycle of all those machines that are out there," he added.

Phillips had been coming to Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course for years and before the opportunity to acquire the business from Hyundai came up said he didn't really know Mansfield existed.

"When I rolled into town I was like, 'This was here?' because I would only go from Columbus to Lexington. I never saw a city with a town square .... This was a real surprise," he said.

Brown asked employees to share their stories:

Brown met in a boardroom with people who worked at the plant previously, when employees were part of the U.S. Steelworkers union, and then returned to work for Ideal Electric's current owners.

One by one, they shared their stories of coming to work at Ideal Electric.

Rod Delaney of Bucyrus said he joined the company in 2008 as a draftsman. He came back to work here in 2020. Darryl Harris who grew up in Bucyrus moved to the Madison Township area in 1987 and has been a purchasing agent for 30-some years and has been with the company for five months. He told Brown he worked for HS Automotive in Mansfield, amid other companies in Galion and Upper Sandusky.

lwhitmir@gannett.com

419-521-7223

X (Formerly Twitter): @LWhitmir

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Sherrod Brown lauds Mansfield firm for long history, buying American