Robinson Inc. at Full Production Capacity in New Building

Robinson, Inc., a leading custom metal manufacturer announces it is in full production at the newest facility in Northeast Wisconsin. The company recently expanded to its fourth location located at 2121 American Boulevard, De Pere. This expansion gives the manufacturer close to 800,000 square feet of manufacturing space for customized production. 

The expansion also consolidates production at several locations:

• The newest location has 240,000 square feet of production space for welding, fabricating, assembly, and electrical integration.
• The plant located at 2107 American Boulevard, De Pere was updated to only handle painting and coatings in 178,000 square feet.
• The plant at 1740 Eisenhower Road was built in 2000 and has 185,000 square feet of production space for shared services such as bending, large format cutting, metal forming, welding, fabricating and assembly, and electrical integration. 
• The company also operates a location in Manitowoc that handles welding, fabrication, assembly, and electrical integration.

The expansion is the latest chapter in the evolution of the business. Started as Robinson Metal & Roofing in 1975, the business has transformed from metal fabrication to advanced manufacturing. 

“We’ve shifted from a large custom job shop into a one-stop-production environment,” said Sam Thomas, president of Robinson, Inc. “Instead of executing a portion of a customer’s project, we’re able to design and build metal enclosures and provide all the skilled services to deliver a fully integrated product to our customers.”

Changing the firm’s focus to integrated manufacturing has allowed expansion into a range of business sectors including energy and power generation, utilities and infrastructure related work. The variety of these industry’s specialized requirements dictated the need for flexible production facilities.

“We overbuilt our facilities to serve customers who required massive units,” Thomas said. “Our ceilings are higher, we increased the size of our powder coat booths to 60-feet to accommodate larger parts, our doors are larger, and we can change production areas accordingly.”

Most notably, Robinson has become a hub of the supply chain for customers. The company has focused on designing, building, and installing custom enclosures for energy storage, pump enclosures, battery energy storage and other storage systems. These enclosures can be larger than a semi-truck trailer and contain generators, electrical systems, plumbing systems or other customized components. 

“Often our customers can’t get the skilled labor they need to build these enclosures themselves, so they look to us for solutions,” said Jeff Kroening, Director of Sales. “Our expanded facilities allow us to prefabricate the enclosures and give customers a one stop shop.” 

Robinson employs over 800 people and in 2023 the company established an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) which leaders say has helped to attract and retain team members.

“Our culture has always been it’s not about the owners, it’s about how we invest in the organization and the team,” Thomas said. “Expanding our business and creating an ESOP helps align the team to pull in the same direction. With employee ownership we all share in the outcome which is success through innovation and exceeding our customers’ expectations.”

Robinson Inc. | https://www.robinsoninc.com/