G&T Industries planning to double size in Blount County

By Rick Laney
of The Daily Times Staff

G&T Industries, a supplier to the boating, RV and private aircraft markets with two locations in Blount County, announced Thursday that it plans to double in size.

Currently operating out of a 42,000-square-foot facility in the Blount Industrial Park on Henry G. Lane Street and an additional 20,000-square-foot facility in Alcoa, G&T Industries says it will consolidate those two operations into a new 105,000-square-foot facility it will build on 15.88 acres of land the company purchased this week in the Big Springs Industrial Park.

G&T Industries opened in Blount County as Marine Specialties Group (MSG) and later changed its name to Global Product Solutions — but the parent company wants all of its entities to be known as G&T Industries.

Rol Grit, the president and CEO of G&T Industries, told The Daily Times, “From our perspective, we are extremely excited to expand in the Maryville area.
“The South is where a significant amount of growth is going to occur in coming years — and we want to be in this area for that purpose.”

G & T Industries is based in Grand Rapids, Mich., and operates facilities in Michigan, Tennessee, Indiana and Pennsylvania. The company was started in 1954 and has more than 350 employees. In 2005, the company became employee owned.
In 1982, G & T Industries opened Blount County facility in a 2,500-square-foot building in the Blount Industrial Park. Today, the company has 35 employees at its two Blount County locations.

According to Grit, the company will spend $4 million to $5 million on the new building and eventually plans to have about 100 employees in its new manufacturing and product distribution facility.

“We are just concluding a major expansion and consolidation in Michigan,” Grit said. “We consolidated three facilities up here — and we need to catch our breath,
“The new facility we have in Alcoa is a pilot manufacturing facility for us where we do foam fabrication — it’s only been operating for about 30 days.

“We will be in the new building before December 2010 — it could be earlier, but it will definitely be before December 2010.”

Grit said G & T Industries worked closely with NAI Knoxville, a real estate firm, that facilitated this expansion as well as four earlier expansions in Blount County.
NAI Knoxville is a commercial and industrial brokerage firm that helps companies locate and obtain properties. The company is also involved in the sale of the First Tennessee Operations Center.

Maribel Koella, principal broker for NAI Knoxville, started working on this latest G & T Industries expansion for over a year. Koella estimates that her company will continue to be involved with the expansion for at least another year.

“We worked closely with the Blount County Industrial Board to ensure that this expansion stayed in Blount County, Tennessee,” Koella said. “They could have gone anywhere — Michigan or North Carolina — they stayed here for the good work force and the work of the Industrial Board made their decision to stay here easy.

“Bryan Daniels and the Blount Industrial Board are an integral part of making this a successful transaction.”