Eyeing growth and diversification, an Ohio-based industrial construction firm found a home this summer in the Leland Innovation Park.

Industrial Reliability and Repair, a company that specializes in industrial fabrication and equipment maintenance and repair, is consolidating its existing Wrightsboro and Elizabethtown shops into a more than 33,000-square-foot facility it’s leasing at 2307 Mercantile Drive NE in Leland. The company recently hosted a ribbon-cutting at the new facility to mark its opening.

Last month, Brunswick County leaders approved up to $250,000 in economic development incentives to cover IRR’s building improvements. To receive the incentive, IRR must create at least 160 new jobs with an average pay of at least $46,500. The company’s current salary projections estimate average annual wages of around $71,000 for the positions.

Industrial Reliability and Repair was formed a decade ago by owners Rick Logan and Justin Murray. Starting out, the company had a narrow focus based on the owners’ past industrial construction experience.

“We were just targeting the pulp and paper industry,” Logan said. “As we were building the company, we learned quickly that we needed to diversify.”

So, they began to expand their reach and acquire other shops, starting with a longtime, family-run machining shop in Chillicothe, Ohio. 

The shop’s owner wanted to retire but didn’t have an exit plan, so IRR purchased and upgraded the shop’s 16,000-square-foot facility, retained most of the employees and kept the shop’s original name, Logan said.

From there, IRR took over another fabrication shop in Cincinnati. Today, the company also owns a shop in Kingsport, Tenn. alongside its Southeastern North Carolina facilities. It employs approximately 200 full-time employees across its facilities and has about 130 other part-time workers, according to Logan.

IRR expanded into North Carolina with its purchase of fabricator Mechanical Specialties, Inc. or MSI in July 2021. The former 6,000-square-foot shop, which specialized in pump and gearbox rebuilds, was located along New Hanover County’s Blue Clay Road.

“That was a perfect piece in helping us diversify for our customers,” Logan said about buying MSI. “It fit what we were trying to do.”

The company also purchased a facility in Elizabethtown to house its operations. Logan said eight employees from the Blue Clay Road shop and between 15 to 18 employees from the Elizabethtown shop will move to the Leland facility.

Logan said IRR began searching for a new shop after realizing they would need a larger space serviced by more electricity to continue to grow the business, Logan said. 

“When this building came available, it only made sense for us to merge … into one building,” Logan said. “It had the space, it had the right location, and it had all the power that we possibly could need – not just for now, but also future growth.”

The building, which is owned by TK KIDS 1 LLC, formerly housed QRP Inc., a company that made parts for the aviation industry. That company consolidated some of its operations and moved out of North Carolina in late 2020, and the building has been vacant since then.

Along with the company’s Tennessee facility, the larger Leland space allows IRR to have more machinery and helps give the company better coverage of the markets in the Southeastern U.S., according to Murray.

The Brunswick County facility will serve the region’s pulp and paper industry along with servicing local chemical plants, the food service industry and local municipalities like the city of Wilmington, Logan said.

Today, the new facility is about 90% up and running, according to Logan. He expects the fabrication shop in Elizabethtown to be fully relocated in the coming weeks.

“By the end of September, we’ll be full-go production,” Logan said.

To staff IRR’s new, larger facility, the company is actively recruiting both seasoned employees and those who are early in their careers, Murray said. 

By the end of the year, Logan said he expects to hire 30 new employees for the Leland shop, and over the next five years, IRR plans to invest in the facility with new equipment, employees and additional field service teams.

Both Murray and Logan said IRR places a huge emphasis on fostering a positive company culture for its employees and hopes to invest in the broader community.

“We're in it for the long term wherever we're at,” Murray said. “We respect where we’re at; we want to be a part of where we’re at.”