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Now Comes Miller Time
$20 million expansion for Meriden manufacturer
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Business New Haven
2/21/2000
By: Michael C. Bingham
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MERIDEN - After 155 years in business in the Silver City, the Miller Co. last month embarked on a major expansion of its Pratt Street headquarters. The $20 million initiative will add 40,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space to the state's 11th-oldest continuously-operating company.
Miller is one of the nation's leading producers of phosphor bronze. Its strip allows are used in a number of electronics products, including cellular phones, automobiles and consumer electronics.
On January 12 the Meriden Planning Commission issued a final approval for a new 36,000-square-foot building to which Miller's finish department will be relocated. That will bring the total amount of manufacturing space at Miller to 181,000 square feet.
As part of the project, the company is demolishing several obsolete buildings and over the next two years will construct additions to house new manufacturing equipment and corporate office space.
The new building will house two high-speed slitting lines as well as a state-of-the-art packaging and handling system. The new finishing department replaces one that was constructed in 1955.
In addition, Miller and the city of Meriden reached a tentative agreement, subject to City Council approval, on a “tax cooperation” agreement aimed at keeping down operating costs while increasing revenues to the city.
The expansion is the product of months of negotiation between the company and both city and state economic development officials, said Miller President and CEO Burton G. Tremaine III. He credited Meriden's political leadership for its “consistent and persistent efforts to make this project a reality.”
Tremaine also praised the willingness of his company's unionized employees to embrace a new work environment.
“We need our plant employees to be cross-trained and flexible,” Tremaine said. “Our recently negotiated labor agreement provides that our employees will learn multiple skills to run all equipment within their classifications.” The Miller Co. presently employs about 160 workers.
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