OTSCON 50 N. Rangeline Road
JM Eagle
6500 N. Brown Station Road Plant Manager: Sherman Deardeuff The 35-40 employees of JM Eagle’s Columbia plant produce polyvinyl chloride pipe by extrusion for the world’s largest plastic pipe manufacturer. The pipes are used in utility, irrigation, potable water and sewer applications. The plant manufactures pipe from 4 inches to 36 inches in diameter. Specialty products are biaxially oriented potable water pipe, dual wall and ultra rib corrugated sewer pipe. The PVC plant has operated in Columbia since the mid-1970s under successive company names of Extrusion Technologies, Uponor and PW Eagle. When PW Eagle and J-M Manufacturing merged in 2007, the company name changed to JM Eagle. Headquartered in Los Angeles, JM Eagle employs more than 1,000 in 20 manufacturing plants in the United States plus two plants in China. www.JMEagle.com
Plant Managers: Satoshi Watanabe, vice president; Keith Kelly, manufacturing department manager If you drive a Japanese car, odds are you’re making use of its made-in-Columbia components. The Columbia OTSCON plant manufactures parking brakes — both foot and hand models — and brake pedals for Nissan Altima, Maxima, Titan, Frontier, Pathfinder, Leaf and Rogue; Honda Civic, CRV/RDX, Odyssey, MDX, Pilot and Acura T/L; Toyota Camry, Avalon and Lexus ES; and Subaru Legacy. Last year, the 210 workers in the two-shift plant turned out approximately 2.7 million units. OTSCON began in 1988 as a joint sales venture between OKK Ltd. of Yokohama, Japan, and Orscheln Industries of Moberly. For five years, the company sold OKK and Orscheln products from its Detroit sales office. In 1993, OTSCON moved to mid-Missouri and began producing parts in a newly purchased building on Rangeline Road. OKK bought out Orscheln’s interest in the company in 1996 but kept the name, which is a combination of the two parent companies — OTS for Otsuka Koki and CON for a common suffix used by other Orscheln companies in the past. It is one of 10 companies owned by Otsuka Koki Ltd. Over the past 22 years, OTSCON has grown from 38 employees to 210 and has made five additions to the original facility. www.otscon.com