BLUEFIELD, W.Va. — Omnis Building Technologies is nearing completion of a new $40 million manufacturing plant in Mercer County and now have begun the process of building a staff.
“When we’re up and running we’re looking at a first wave of about 35 to 45 employees per shift. We’ll look to be running first shift when we get up and running, then we’ll add a second shift and eventually go to a 24/7 production schedule,” said Matthew Hart, Vice-President of Human Resources.
Omnis uses state of the art building materials to create pre-fabricated home building blocks. The blocks are then used to pre-assemble sustainable and energy efficient homes. The company is headquartered in California and announced Bluefield would be the site of their first operation in the eastern United States in March 2022. The company worked closely with the West Virginia development office and development officials in the city of Bluefield and Mercer County to make the decision. Part of what drew them to West Virginia was a commitment toward providing a trained, qualified workforce. Hart said has happened.
“We haven’t had a problem finding employees, we actually have had over 1,500 applications so far. We’ve had a great response,” he added.
He credited the deep pool of applicants to work by the city of Bluefield and local officials in support of the project. The pay didn’t hurt either.
“We’re actually starting our line operators at $30 an hour”, he said.
Officials anticipated by the time the new plant is at full operational capacity, they’ll have close to 200 full-time employees. Hart said the plan is to have operations start in the fourth quarter of this year.
Most applicants for the jobs are from the local area in both West Virginia and across the border in Virginia. Hart said they’ve also had great interest from some who want to come home.
“A lot were Bluefield residents in the past and grew up here, but had to move away and now are looking to come back,” he said.
Applications for the Bluefield jobs are available on the Omnis Technologies Website.