SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa | With some 1,250 employees in two Dickinson County locations, Polaris Industries is the region’s largest employer and is continuing to expand with new product lines.
Polaris was founded in Roseau, Minn., in 1954 as a snowmobile manufacturer. That line quickly morphed to include a line of personal water craft that was produced in Spirit Lake until about 10 years ago, when the company dropped the product from its roster.
“It was strategic business decision on where we invest our money," said Brian Hines, Spirit Lake plant director.
"Do we invest in a water craft market that really didn’t show the future signs of success that we were looking for? Or do we invest in growing some of our more high-potential businesses?”Â
Polaris took over an abandoned ice machine factory in Spirit Lake in 1994 and, with last year’s $7.7 million expansion, now has four production lines in 400,000 square feet of space there and another 368,000 square feet in the former Stylecraft Furniture facility in nearby Milford.
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Polaris is now making only four motorcycle products on its four Spirit Lake production lines -- the Slingshot, Indian, Indian Scout and Victory lines. The Milford plant manufactures GEM electric cars and Ranger, Ace, vehicles, along with private-labeled products for Bobcat and Ariens utility equipment.
NEW SLINGSHOT, BRAMMO LINES
The company debuted its Spirit Lake-manufactured Slingshot line of three-wheeled motorcycles in the second half of 2014, “and has been working ever since to fill advance orders for the products and keep the dealer pipeline full,” said Hines. “We’re doing the best we can to meet customer demands. We’re certainly in pipe-line fill mode where we have a lot of initial orders to fill.”
Polaris announced in January the acquisition of two electric motorcycle designs from Oregon-based Brammo, with which it had a partnership. Both the Enertia and Empulse lines will ultimately be produced in Spirit Lake, without adding significantly to the employment numbers here, Hines said.
“Moving forward, we expect motorcycles to grow significantly, so we have our work cut out for us to lean-out our operations and find as much productivity and capacity improvement as we can every single year to keep costs down and continue to absorb future growth," he added.
“We’ve invested a tremendous amount in capability and capacity in Spirit Lake and Milford, to set ourselves up for the future. Our most important task over the next couple of years is to really optimize improving our delivery to our customer and continue to find ways to lean-out our operations. At the plant level, it’s about driving productivity improvement.”
OTHER FACILITIES
Polaris recently announced that it expects to have a new plant in operation in Huntsville, Ala., by 2016 This plant is scheduled to concentrate on off-road products like the Ranger that is used as a utility vehicle and for recreational purposes, such as hunting, ice fishing, trail-riding.
Opened in 2011, a Polaris plant in Monterrey, Mexico is producing Ranger and RZR sport, side-by-side vehicles for distribution in the South and Southwestern parts of the United States and Latin American markets.
To better serve the European market, a new Polaris plant opened in Opole, Poland, in 2014. This facility primarily makes off-road vehicles. “A significant amount of our sales comes from Europe,” Hines said.
