Aerospace firm Janicki plans Utah plant

Janicki Industries, a Sedro-Woolley-based engineering firm whose work includes high-end machining for aerospace manufacturers, will open a plant in Utah to trim and drill composite wing skins and other parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

It's the first major expansion outside Washington for the family-run company, which employs about 380 people in Skagit County.

Janicki expects to make a $19.5 million capital investment and to provide 50 manufacturing jobs.

The Utah Governor's Office of Economic Development, which announced the decision Thursday, arranged a tax credit for Janicki of up to $316,275 over 10 years to attract the plant.

The site in Utah hasn't been finalized, but it will likely be near Clearfield, north of Salt Lake City, where Alliant Techsystems will make carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic-composite wing skins and nacelle skins for the F-35. The Janicki operation will machine parts from both the Alliant plant and a similar plant operated by HITCO in Gardena, Calif.

John Janicki, co-founder and president of Janicki Industries, said that while the Utah economic-development team is "pretty organized and efficient," the main consideration going outside Washington wasn't the tax incentive. Janicki wants to be near the Alliant parts plant for efficiency and to avoid transportation costs.

In addition to its Sedro-Woolley plant, Janicki in 2007 opened a second Washington facility in nearby Hamilton. It is working about 30 percent below capacity because of the recession and has downsized from about 500 employees in late 2006. But Janicki didn't consider placing the work here.

"We really didn't approach the state of Washington," said Janicki. "We needed to get closer to where you make most of the parts."

At Janicki's new facility, mechanics will use massive 5-axis milling machines to edge-trim and drill the composite skins with extremely high accuracy.

With F-35 production expected to ramp up significantly in the next few years, prime contractor Lockheed Martin awarded the wing and nacelle-skin contracts to Alliant and HITCO earlier this year.

Gardena was also considered as a potential location. But Janicki said the area north of Salt Lake has successfully attracted a lot of new aerospace companies and existing companies have been expanding.

He said he hopes the Utah expansion will increase company sales broadly and result in more work for the new Hamilton facility.

Founded in 1993, Janicki also designs and builds state-of-the-art tooling — the large fixtures that aerospace manufacturers, including Boeing, use when fabricating airplane parts.

For the Boeing plant in Charleston, S.C., Janicki makes composite plastic molds around which carbon-fiber fabric is wrapped and hardened to form the composite-plastic rear-fuselage sections of the 787 Dreamliner.

About 90 percent of the company's business is in aerospace, with some additional work making wind turbines.

"The thing we really need to work on with the state (of Washington) is to make us cost-effective for future work," Janicki said, citing the burden of high business tax and workers' comp rates.

"In a lot of ways Washington is very competitive. But in some ways, it's not."

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com