Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Inc. (SEL), the Pullman-based maker of electrical-system protection, monitoring, and control equipment, says it is launching development of a production complex in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, that will cost upwards of $10 million.


The company says it will relocate a five-year-old, 150-employee manufacturing operation there from a smaller facility in Monterrey, Mexico. Ed Schweitzer, SELs president and founder, says he expects the new facility to employ 300 people within a few years.


Schweitzer says the 1,400-employee company, whose revenues recently have been growing at an average of about 20 percent a year, probably will add about 200 workers in all next year, with most of them working in Pullman. It currently has more than 100 job openings for positions ranging from engineers to marketing and product managers.


San Luis Potosi, which has a population of about 700,000, is located in the central part of Mexico and is the capital city of a state of the same name. Its roughly midway between Monterrey, located to the northeast, and Mexico City, to the southeast.


SEL says its planned complex there will include a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing plant, a 30,000-square-foot engineering building, and a 7,000-square-foot event center.


It will be located on a 14-acre site the company bought earlier this year that Schweitzer says has plenty of room for expansion. The company says it is beginning construction of the facility this week and expects the plant there to begin operating by next August. Its using Mexican companies to design and construct the buildings.


SELs need to expand its manufacturing capabilities, and soaring property costs in the much more heavily populated Monterrey area, led to the companys decision to develop a new facility in San Luis Potosi, Schweitzer says. He says he hasnt decided yet what to do with the 30,000-square-foot plant that the company will be vacating, where it builds electrical protection panels and control houses for world markets, but is considering it for other potential uses.


Schweitzer disclosed plans for the expansion in Mexico during an open house last week in Pullman to mark the completion of more than $20 million worth of projects on SELs bustling, hillside campus just north of the Washington State University campus.


Those projects included construction of a new 90,000-square-foot, five-story corporate headquarters, a 17,000-square-foot events center, and a 100,000-square-foot addition to the companys manufacturing plant there, boosting the latter facility to more than 200,000 square feet. The events center was completed last fall, and SEL moved into the new headquarters building over the fall and winter months.


They were the 10th and 11th structures the company has built or bought in that hillside area. The company began using the added manufacturing space about two months ago. (See separate photo of SELs campus on page B22.)


ALSC Architects PS and Lydig Construction Inc., both of Spokane, were the architect and general contractor on those projects.


SELs current work force of about 1,400 people worldwide is up about 100 from a year ago. More than 1,000 of those employees work in Pullman. In all, the company has 36 domestic and 26 international service centers and sells products in 119 countries.


Along with the plants in Pullman and Monterrey, it has a manufacturing facility in Lake Zurich, Ill., operated by E.O. Schweitzer Manufacturing Co., which SEL acquired three years ago and now operates as a division of the parent company. Ed Schweitzers father had started that company in 1949.


Schweitzer is a strong advocate of hiring locally, or domestically, rather than sending work outside the U.S., and spoke pointedly about that preference last week as a guest speaker at the Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerces annual meeting.


He says, though, that SELs Mexican operation, which is administered through a wholly owned subsidiary called SEL Mexico, is important because about half of its production is sold to customers in Mexico.


The company is continuing to build at its Pullman manufacturing plant all of the transceivers, controllers, protective relays, and other high-tech, digital components that it sells.


Contact Kim Crompton at (509) 344-1263 or via e-mail at kimc@spokanejournal.com.