Woodward opens new plants in northern Illinois

Woodward Inc. has opened its second large manufacturing plant in northern Illinois in slightly more than a month.

The Fort Collins-based aviation systems and aerospace technology company (Nasdaq: WWD) held a ribbon cutting, Aug. 20, for a 334,700-square-foot facility in Niles, Ill., in Chicago’s near northwest suburbs and just east of O’Hare International Airport. That opening follows a July 1 ribbon cutting for a 450,000-square-foot building about 80 miles to the west in Loves Park, Ill., the suburb of Rockford where Amos Woodward founded the company, then known as The Woodward Governor Co., in 1870.

The Niles plant consolidates Woodward operations – and about 950 employees – in one building, where electromechanical flight-control and utility-actuation systems, fly-by-wire cockpit-control systems, sensors, electric motors and components are built.

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Woodward had purchased Niles-based MPC Products Corp. in 2009 from the Roberti family, which retained ownership of five buildings on the site and leased them to Woodward. Its work had been spread out between those buildings, often inefficiently, so Woodward was prompted to find a way to put everything under one roof. The Robertis “sold those buildings in November knowing we were going to consolidate,” said Woodward spokeswoman Jeanne Lasley.

The new Woodward-owned building has manufacturing space in the back and 100,000 square feet of newly constructed office and support space in front.

“It was built as an open work environment with collaborative workspaces on the manufacturing floor as well as the offices — the same way they’re building the new Fort Collins campus” on the former site of the Link-N-Greens Golf Course at Lincoln Street and Lemay Avenue, Lasley said. The headquarters building on that site is scheduled to be open by December, she said, with the industrial turbo-machinery systems building to follow by February. Woodward is moving from its longtime headquarters campus at 1000 E. Drake Road.

At the new plant in Loves Park, Woodward focuses on aircraft turbine systems.