Orion makes another jobs promise

From an article by Charlie Mathews in the Sheboygan Press:

MANITOWOC — Louie Mitcheltree remembered back to June 2004 when he was the only employee in the building, the former mammoth distribution center of Mirro cookware and bakeware.

“There certainly have been a lot of changes,” said Mitcheltree on Thursday, a few minutes after Gov. Jim Doyle was in the Mirro Drive plant now owned by Orion Energy Systems.

In return for agreeing to add 170 jobs over the next three years, Doyle said Orion will receive $854,500 in community development zone tax credits.

It’s a dollar-for-dollar deduction on its Wisconsin corporate income tax return, said Dan Waibel, president of Orion Assets Management.

“The pay will range between $13 to $16.25 an hour, and there’s a requirement we can’t move for five years,” Waibel said.

“We bet on a pretty good horse,” Doyle said of Plymouth-based Orion, which, aided by a 2004 state jobs credit package of $350,000, now has 131 manufacturing employees and another 101 in sales, project management and corporate services.

Orion’s energy-efficient technologies include lighting systems it says produces twice as much light for half the cost.

Its Apollo Light Pipes use “direct renewable energy” — the sun — to bring light to a building’s interior.