In addition to celebrating our new members, we have some longstanding ones whose success is demanding them to expand their businesses.

Bert Klapec, Inc. (BKI), located on North Seneca Street in Oil City, is building an 80×80 foot steel repair garage for trucks and machines (pictured top right). The original garage was only 65-feet long and they couldn’t fit a whole tractor trailer inside, so it was time to grow. Dave Klapec reported: “We’ll be able to work on all of our big machines indoors now.” BKI, along with some help from Klapec Express, Inc. (KEI), is doing all of the work themselves in between jobs. They hope to have all outside work done before winter and then finish up inside shortly after.

Caldwell Printing and Signage Solutions has recently grown as well. The building (pictured middle right), which was previously used to store plumbing equipment, was already attached to their current space, so it was the perfect addition. With the new addition, their square footage is up to about 9,700 feet. The space will be used for production.

Deets Mechanical, located on Gilmore Drive in Seneca, is also in the process of expanding their footprint. A warehouse and garage space (pictured bottom right) measuring about 4,400 square feet is almost finished and since adding five trucks to their caravan this year, will be a welcome addition. They are doing most of the work in house, which started this summer, and are excited to finish and put the new space to use.

Another new local business changes involves Bob Fox, owner of Chamber member Fox Containers. Bob has teamed up with Grove City businessman, Dan Martin, to form FOXPAK, LLC,  packaging various types of ice melts. FOXPAK has already identified several distribution locations throughout the region and will be looking for more.  We’ll be sharing more about Bob’s new venture in our next newsletter.

This article was published in the Venango Area Chamber of Commerce’s November 2018 edition of the VenangoWorks! Newsletter.