KelTec is the largest gunmaker in the state of Florida, but when the company looked to expand its manufacturing footprint, ultimately, the decision was made to create KelTec West, an entirely new production facility located in Rock Springs, Wyo. Watch our "American Rifleman Television" feature segment above to hear the company's reasoning for its expansion into Wyoming, as well as some of the new initiatives and products released recently from KelTec.
"We decided to move out to Wyoming for two reasons," said Adrian Kellgren, KelTec's director of operations. "One, safe harbor from any kind of political situation. And we wanted to take a hard look to see if there was safe harbor out there. And we found that in Wyoming. The governor was visiting the SHOT Show many times and quite honestly impressed my father with his presence. And he decided that he wanted to go somewhere where there was a safety net in terms of the political environment. Wyoming is solidly red. It will continue to be solidly red. And the other aspect of it, my dad always had this ambition of having a Alpine factory. He really likes Mec-Gar and their northern Italian facility with the Alps right there."
Eventually, KelTec settled on the existing facility in Rock Springs, as the inclusion of several 15-ton overhead cranes gave the company the ability to set up the manufacturing floor exactly as needed for efficient production without relying on outside contractors to position equipment.
" So a lot of the facility was pretty much turn-key. You know, we wanted to clean up a bit. It had been sitting for a while, so it was a bit of housekeeping required and some infrastructure that we needed to put in," said Derek Kellgren, KelTec's director of sales. "But for the most part, it had a lot of space and we were able to get the machines in and set it up quite nicely though, with that much space, you can really have the freedom to build the flow of production the way you want it."
Rock Springs also attracted KelTec's interest due to the industrial-focused educational opportunities in the area. Other existing industries nearby rely on resource-gathering, particularly in oil and mining, and the trades that are developed in those areas allow for companies like KelTec to tap into a capable workforce that can operate the equipment needed to make guns.
"My blank canvas that was given to me for this facility was to try and place the machinery, like a process from start to finish a flow, like a flow chart where it would actually come from the machine shop over to finishing and then to assembly, and then to test firing and then to shipping," said Chris Williams, KelTec's Wyoming plant operations manager. "It's kind of great here, we're only under one facility. In Florida, we've got seven different facilities. But that was the way I envisioned it at first, with the canvas, was trying to set up stuff and have it to where it flows out the door to the customer."
To watch complete segments of past episodes of American Rifleman TV, go to americanrifleman.org/videos/artv. For all-new episodes of ARTV, tune in Wednesday nights to Outdoor Channel 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. EST.
