The Planning Board unanimously gave its blessing to an expansion of Apollo Steel in Jaffrey, which owner Cliff Pelissier said will lead to new jobs and new types of machinery.
The steel fabricator, located in an industrial park on Maria Drive, has 32 employees, which Pelissier said he hopes to expand by a further three or four jobs in the next few years as the expansion is built and new machinery is installed.
Pelissier said the shop will expand back to add 11,280 square feet, to allow for additional equipment, as well as loading trucks inside the warehouse. The garage, which is a separate building, would also increase by 3,000 square feet to accommodate his current fleet of vehicles.
The Planning Board offered little feedback on the plan, and no abutters or members of the public offered any objections to the proposal during the board’s public hearing on Tuesday. The board accepted the application as complete and approved it after a short presentation by a representative for Apollo Steel.
Pelissier said he only recently expanded his shop a few years ago, but is ready to grow some more.
“We never have enough room,” Pelissier said.
The business, run on the motto “No job too big. No job too small,” has been in operation since 2007, and lived up to that motto, working with businesses large and small throughout New Hampshire and Massachusetts to provide steel for their construction, including multiple Market Basket and Home Goods stores, schools, fitness centers and retail stores. They’ve worked on materials for local projects, too, including the MilliporeSigma wastewater plant, the Park Theatre in Jaffrey, and Rivermead in Peterborough, as well as the flagpoles for the town of Jaffrey.
While the most common thing they do is steel beams for structures, they also take jobs creating smaller steel objects, such as stairs, railings and ladders.
In addition to fabricating steel, the business also has crews that erect the steel frameworks.
Despite the current down economy, Pelissier said there is still a high demand for fabricated steel. Apollo Steel fabricates beams for construction projects, as well as other fabrication jobs, and while there have been some delays related to the virus, such as securing design documents, Pelissier said Apollo Steel is still in demand.
“We look to be busy not through at least the end of the year. We won’t be able to keep up,” Pelissier said.
However, he added, the expansion is “looking to the future,” as his full vision for the space is likely a few years out. He hopes to add machinery to clean the fabricated steel, a process that is done manually now. It will speed up his production process, he said.
The extra space also allows for trucks for shipments of their steel to jobsites to be loaded indoors, which he said will be easier in inclement weather as well as cutting down on noise outside the building.
Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.