Freudenberg North America anticipates hiring more employees and investing in capital expenditures over the next two years in New Hampshire, including for its Kluber Lubrication facility in Londonderry.
Freudenberg operates three companies – Kluber Lubrication, Freudenberg-NOK Sealing Technologies and Trelleborg Vibracoustic, a joint venture with Trelleborg – has seven industrial facilities and 1,300 employees in the state. Kluber Lubrication is part of Freudenberg Chemical Specialties.
All of our businesses in New Hampshire are expecting to grow, Freudenberg North America Ltd. Partnership President Leesa Smith told Lube Report. We are looking to hire about 100 people over the next two to three years to support growth of our business. Weve been in dialogue with the state of New Hampshire, to try to find ways to partner with institutions to develop some technical training programs to focus on key skillsets we need for our businesses.
According to Smith, Kluber Lubrication currently employs about 50 people at its Londonderry, N.H., location, with 20 more workers who are considered boots on the street.
Kluber Lubrication has a vision of what it would like to do, she said. The vision is they would potentially add about a 10,000 square foot office building to the existing site, Smith said. That would help to grow and focus on supporting the planned sales growth in the North America region. Thats in its conceptual stages, and they are hoping to do that within the next two to three years.
The New Hampshire location of Kluber Lubrication is seeking to hire a couple application and service engineers, Smith said, focusing particularly on tribological solutions. These openings are really a bit unique, she noted. They really have to have this combination of technical expertise within the specialty lubricants market along with being able to provide customer support. They are fairly challenging to fill because of the unique combination of skillsets.
Smith is meeting in July with officials from the New Hampshire Department of Resources and Economic Development and states college technical training system to discuss strategies and partnerships that will enhance worker training programs and encourage broader adoption of state incentives benefiting manufacturers.
Over 25 percent of Freudenbergs North American workforce and sales are located and generated in New Hampshire, she said. But we are also keenly aware that competition for corporate investment is fierce and global, and we need strong public-private partnerships to overcome perceived challenges such as talent shortages and limited subsidies for industrial operations.
Munich, Germany-based Kluber Lubrication offers approximately 2,000 different specialty lubricants, many of them developed and manufactured to specific customer requirements.