BY MIKE WARREN
EDITOR
MARSHFIELD — Consolidation plans first announced by Marshfield-based H&S Manufacturing in February are starting to take shape this month.

Leaders at H&S Manufacturing announced Feb. 5 they would be closing their Clintonville location and moving those operations to Marshfield. President Craig Harthoorn told Hub City Times on June 11 those plans are now being put into motion.

“Unfortunately, part of our plan was that some staff would be terminated, there’d be staff reductions and then some staff would be relocated – which we did have a few staff that are relocating – and then remaining staff will be set up in a remote office, so there’ll be about ten to twelve people that’ll be working out of a remote office in that Clintonville area,” Harthoorn said.

“And then part of that consolidation from Clintonville into Marshfield was that we would be moving a bulk of the manufacturing equipment that is in Clintonville here to Marshfield, and we are in the process of doing that as we speak,” Harthoorn added. “We have shut down a few machines and the equipment mover is coming in here [last week of June] to start grabbing some of that equipment and starting to move it here to Marshfield. So, currently everything is going according to plan, in terms of personnel and equipment moves.”

Harthoorn told us the Marshfield campus is ready for a transition to a higher manufacturing output.

“We established plans on how to repurpose two buildings, and we’re currently in the process with a couple of contractors right now in repurposing two buildings,” said Harthoorn. “And what I mean by repurposing is upgrading electrical facilities, upgrading some accesses, we put sprinkler systems in the one building because there will be welding in that building, so we’ve been working with contractors on repurposing and upgrading the facilities to handle the manufacturing that’s coming here to Marshfield from Clintonville.”

Harthoorn said that additional manufacturing will start in Marshfield around Aug. 1 and the complete transition should be completed around Sept. 1.

As for the company’s research and development operations at Clintonville, that facility is scheduled to close sometime in early 2025.

“R&D is in the process of being relocated as well,” Harthoorn said. “We are relocating R&D to a building that we lease from Don Nikolai Construction.”

The total employment impact, in terms of eliminating redundant positions, is approximately 40 jobs, Harthoorn told us. Existing production workers in Clintonville were being offered an opportunity to relocate to Marshfield, where Harthoorn says the company’s manufacturing is growing, thanks in part to its acquisition one year ago by Oxbo International, headquartered in Roosendaal, the Netherlands.

“Part of this consolidation is upgrading our manufacturing capabilities to also bring in the Oxbo-branded forage products,” said Harthoorn. “So, not only are we consolidating and doing everything here in Marshfield for the red H&S products, but we will also be building the gold Oxbo-branded hay mergers and forage boxes.”

Harthoorn said Oxbo’s acquisition of H&S, coupled with the consolidation of the Marshfield and Clintonville facilities, could not have come at a better time for the company.

“Right now, dairy is really slow,” he said. “Dairy farming is off right now, so this actually works out to be a pretty good time to make this happen because the dairy economy is down right now and our demand is down because of that. That creates some additional time that we can make this transition, as opposed to two years ago when everybody was busting at the seams, including us,” Harthoorn added. “That would have been extremely difficult to make happen, so the timing of this is coinciding with the temporary downturn in the ag economy.”

Harthoorn also told us the moves of production from Clintonville and an Oxbo facility in Byron, NY to Marshfield should create approximately two dozen positions.

Those moves coincide with the addition of a new 38,000 square-foot assembly building.

“We’re fully utilizing the new assembly building. That project has also led to some greatly-enhanced production efficiencies, so that, too, works well with bringing the gold Oxbo forage products here to Marshfield,” Harthoorn explained. “With our setup and with the improvement in tooling and processes and automation, we can actually get more throughput in the facility than what we could even two, three years ago.”

The new assembly facility was completed late last summer.

H&S Manufacturing has customers in the 48 contiguous states, along with the southern provinces of Canada, and several dozen other countries across the globe.

H&S Manufacturing Co., Inc. was founded by Mr. Lauri Heikenen and two partners in 1967. In the years that followed, Heikenen bought out the original partners and H&S remained a family-owned business until the Oxbo acquisition on June 20, 2023.