Our third CEO Conversation featured Jason Woolcock, one of the owners of Witherup Fabrication. Here we’re sharing a sampling from the conversation, all of which can be found at venangochamber.org/ceo-conversations.

Tell us a little about Witherup Fabrication:
We’re a tank manufacturer, located in Kennerdell. Witherup started as a family owned business over 60 years ago, developing water systems. Now we’ve grown to serve different industries, including chemical plants, water treatment and refineries.

What’s contributed to your growth?
While we bid jobs every day, 60-70 percent of our work is with repeat customers. We provide them with what they need, servicing existing equipment and doing new orders for them.

How have you retained employees?
We strive to go above and beyond what’s required. Our incentives have attracted workers, including boilermakers to want to stay or to return to work with us. This ensures we have experienced workers who take great care of our customers. We currently have about 40 employees.

What would best prepare someone to work at Witherup?
We work with the Venango Technology Center and the co-op program and get great referrals from their programs.

How have you overcome the challenges of business over time?
Safety and documentation requirements have added to our overhead, but we’ve hired the right staff to get this done and keep us competitive. Having this expertise has given us more opportunity.

Listen to the entire interview at the link above and stay tuned for our next conversation, to be announced soon.

This article was published in the Venango Chamber’s September 2021 VenangoWorks! Newsletter.