Great Falls is a finalist for a potential manufacturing facility expansion for Janicki Industries, a privately-owned engineering and manufacturing company.
Great Falls is one of two locations Janicki is considering for its expansion. The other is the Twin Falls/Jerome area in Idaho.
The company expects to decide before the end of May, Erin Hurley, Janicki’s marketing manager, told The Electric.
Janicki has locations in Washington and Utah and for more than 33 years, the company has designed and built composite and metallic tooling, parts, prototypes and assembled structures for many industries and is one of the largest privately owned Tier 1 aerospace suppliers in the U.S., according to the company.
Janicki has made significant investments, scaling from about 900 employees in 2022 to nearly 1,900 by the end of 2025, with more than a million square feet for manufacturing space, but “demand for Janicki’s capabilities continues to outpace capacity,” according to the company.
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Future growth requires a large-scale geographic expansion for which Janicki has a plan to invest more than $800 million into a new multi-building manufacturing campus with the expectation of building up to two million square feet of production space over the next decade, the company said in a release.
Janicki evaluated several states before issuing requests for information and company representatives have visited communities and continues to conduct feasibility studies and land evaluations to identify opportunities and cost challenges.
The company is applying for state and local tax incentives and “pursuing infrastructure support to offset site development costs,” according to a release.
Those tax incentives and infrastructure support will be key factors in the site selection, but “we are not looking for special treatment,” Nick Lavacca, Janicki community relations manager, said in a release. “As we move forward with applications, our campus layout and building designs need to be fluid and are subject to change at this early stage of identifying the right location.”
Janicki met with officials in Montana and Idaho this week as it finalizes a site decision.
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Hurley, Janicki’s marketing manager, told The Electric that the company is exploring all tax abatement and incentive programs at the state and local levels but “are not applying for anything outside of what the state is already offering to every business.”
The company anticipates the new campus will create more than 1,000 manufacturing and engineering jobs within five years.
Jolene Schalper, Great Falls Development Alliance executive vice president, said in an email that advanced manufacturing is underrepresented in the regional economy and provides high-wage jobs and benefits, “primary sector income coming from outside our community; opportunities for supply chain partnerships; and economic diversification and resilience.”
She wrote that speed to market is a factor in Janicki’s decision-making process so having shovel-ready sites in AgriTrch kept Great Falls in the competition.
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Hurley told The Electric that the company designs and builds composite and metallic tooling, parts, prototypes, and assembled structures, including fly-away parts and large-scale, high-precision assemblies.
She said many of their programs are proprietary, but they support some of the largest and most advanced programs in air, sea and space in the U.S.
One of those projects is NASA’s Artemis mission.
Janicki has supplied tooling and parts in support of the Artemis program and its predecessor missions.
The company’s work with NASA goes back at least a decade and includes manufacturing the composite diaphragm for the Orion stage adapter, which serves as a critical barrier between propellant gases and the crew compartment during launch.
The company also developed composite tooling for the Space Launch System payload fairing.
Hurley told The Electric that she isn’t able to comment on specific programs but didn’t believe Janicki is involved in the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile transition underway at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
Hurley told The Electric that Great Falls is under consideration for several reasons as large-scale manufacturing depends on reliable, fairly priced access to power, water, transportation, construction and workforce housing.
“Workforce availability and proximity to our current sites and customers were also evaluated. The hospitality we’ve received from local government, economic development partners, and the governor’s office has been outstanding. Their commitment to growing the community and strengthening the regional economy is another significant factor in our decision,” Hurley said.
She told The Electric that they’re still in the planning stages, but the majority of roles would be skilled manufacturing and engineering, along with support positions in facilities, supply chain, and administration.
At their existing facilities in Washington and Utah, Hurley said Janicki partners directly with local schools and technical programs to build their talent pipeline, and Hurley said they’d plan to do the same in any new community.
Janicki hires at both entry and skilled levels and “we take pride in training our employees to succeed in their roles and grow their careers with us,” Hurley said.
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The company’s goal is to “build a workforce rooted in the local community. We may relocate a small number of experienced team members to help establish operations and train new employees, but the majority of positions will be filled locally,” Hurley told The Electric.
Schalper wrote that if Great Falls is selected, the company will need temporary housing for 12-24 team members who will be rotating in and out of town, working on the project over the next year; and temporary office space and a large training space to get project work underway in a training environment.
*NASA photo of Janicki technicians working on an Artemis component
