“Over the last 15 years, we’ve been growing a presence in Ohio, so we’ve been looking to get a presence, a brick-and-mortar (location) down there,” Bartells said.
Peerless has been in business for more than 75 years. It has three steel services centers or warehouses in Michigan, but it has shipped all over the Midwest for decades, and once supplied Quality Steels in Moraine. (The local company bought product from Peerless to re-sell in the Dayton market.)
The company focuses on the distribution of carbon, alloy, tool and die, cast iron, aluminum, high-speed and knife steels.
Earlier in February, two Wilse Inc. manufacturing plants in Moraine — including the site once known as Quality Steels — were approaching closure, affecting nearly 50 employees.
Bartells declined to talk about the terms of the acquisition, but he said he turned that situation around quickly, with the cooperation of the previous owner.
“We were far enough with the deal that we hired employees back,” he said. “We started them up on Tuesday of this week. We actually have people in the facility working currently.”
Some of the next steps including bar-coding and tracking the local inventory and getting the company’s operations integrated with the Peerless computer system.
For the time being, he will continue to ship product into the greater Dayton area from Michigan. But his goal is to be “fully operational” with his newly purchased local assets by about April 1.
“We have plenty of business that we’re doing in Michigan that we can fill the (Moraine) facility,” he said. “But we are rather optimistic that we can be running a three-shift operation by the end of the year.”
He added, “The plan would be to grow that operation immensely.”
That would be a bump up in productivity for the local site, he agreed. Peerless can move enough work to not only keep a first shift busy, but add new shifts.
Those interested in applying for open positions may visit www.peerlesssteel.com/application-employment. Or they can visit the plant at 2221 Arbor.
Wilse, an Indiana holding company, acquired what was Miller Consolidated Industries, Inc. (MCI), a Moraine-based metal treating and steels supply company, in January 2021.
MCI then was made up of operating units Quality Steels (established in 1929), Metallurgical Services (which got its start in 1946), Day Met Finishing (founded in 1980) and Met Lab (established in the late 1980s).
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