154,000-ft. Jayco plant slated for Twin Falls

By Lora Volkert

IDAHO BUSINESS REVIEW

TWIN FALLS – Jayco Inc., a Middlebury, Ind.-based recreational vehicle manufacturer, announced last week it will open a 154,000-square-foot plant in Twin Falls.

The plant on Washington Street is to employ 80 people and begin operations in the first quarter of 2005, as close to January as possible. Jayco is leasing an existing building and plans to renovate it within the next 90 days. A Jayco spokesman did not have a cost estimate for the renovations or the names of the architect and contractor.

The company has a “record order backlog” on its Jay Flight RVs, and its Indiana plant is operating near capacity, Derald Bontrager, Jayco’s president and chief operating officer, said in a statement. “New order intake is outpacing our manufacturing capacity,” he said.

Demand for RVs has increased because of low interest rates and because the nation’s demographics are shifting to a larger percentage of 50- to 64-year-olds, the age range in which RV ownership is highest.

Company revenues were in the $450 million range this year, and sales grew nearly 40 percent over fiscal 2003, according to Sid Johnson, Jayco’s director of marketing.

The company chose Twin Falls for its new plant because of Idaho’s labor climate and because access to suppliers and interstate transportation would lower freight costs, Bontrager said. Jayco’s only other North American manufacturing facilities are at its Indiana headquarters.

In addition, the Twin Falls plant “will provide us the opportunity to improve our already growing market share in the western United States and Canada,” he said. California, Oregon and Washington are three of the states with the largest markets for RVs, and Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan represent a large portion of Jayco’s sales in Canada.

Jayco, which employs 1,300, makes folding camping trailers, travel trailers, fifth wheel trailers and motor homes under the Eagle, Designer, Jay Series, Jay Feather, Jay Flight, Talon, Escapade, Greyhawk, Granite Ridge and Seneca brand names. It is a family-owned company and the third largest RV producer by unit volume in North America.