MILLWOOD, W.Va. — Along Route 2 in Jackson County the lonely drive through the country makes a radical transformation when you travel through the community of Millwood. Headed north the right-hand side the road is former farm fields covered in solar panels in various stages of assembly. The left side of the road is heavy construction for industrial growth. It’s the first steps of what many hope will be the future of West Virginia manufacturing.
The microgrid solar array will provide 70 percent of the electricity to power the Timet plant which is taking shape.
The titanium plant is projected to be in the first stages of production by the end of the year. The plant will eventually create a variety of specialty titanium products for the aerospace industry.
“The majority of what the aerospace industry consumes is an alloy called 6/4, that’s six-percent aluminum and four-percent vanadium. But we do make other specialist alloys,” said plant General Manager Alun Davis.
Timet has worked closely to develop those special alloys with various properties to meet the needs of customers. He expected to start making 6/4 and various other types of titanium alloys at the Jackson County plant.
Davis also stressed the most critical aspect of the new facility will be its purity. He explained this will not be a series of smokestacks belching black smoke and foul odor into the air and covering everything nearby in a layer of soot. Those kinds of mills he explained are from a bygone era.
“If you compare a titanium melt shop to a traditional steel mill it’s significantly different. We melt all of the titanium under a vacuum using Vacuum Arc Remelt (VAR) Technology. We don’t have live, open furnaces with molten titanium you can see. It’s all contained within a system in a vacuum,” he explained.
The end product will be a raw titanium ingot weighing 15,000 pounds. Those will be trucked from the Millwood operation to another Timet operation for finishing work.
At full capacity the Jackson County plant will have about 200 employees on site. Hannah Hesson is the Human Resources Manager and is helping lead the hiring process.
“We’re looking at our first melt toward the end of Q-4 so we’re going to ramp up hiring. As far as operational jobs like VAR operators, we have a little over 300 workers ready to go and sitting in a pool ready for us to pull from,” said Hesson.
The company is looking for specialty workers like engineers, millwrights and other skilled technicians along with managers and clerical staff. Application can be made on the Timet website. Hesson said they have also worked with local schools like the Roane-Jackson Technical Center and WVU Parkersburg to get people interested in positions. The interest has been strong.
“We only had six spots and we had more than 20 people in just a few days. We’re having a lot of interest,” she said.
But the real need according to Hesson is the right kind of worker. Skills and abilities are important, but she added the biggest attribute they’re looking for is attitude and work ethic.
“Nobody here really knows how to make titanium, so we don’t expect them to come in with a vast knowledge. We are looking for people who want to invest in this area and want to see the plant grow or who want to be part of a project from the ground up. We can teach them the titanium melting skills,” she explained.