ANNA — “It seems that 2023 has flown by and that I had just submitted the article for last year’s Progress Edition,” said Andy Haag, Wells Brothers director of sales. “I always go back to the previous year’s predictions. We had projected and hoped for another solid year. Some of the red flags for last year were the continued increasing of interest rates plus higher inflation which can lead to tighter money and fewer projects. Even with those challenges, our year turned out well.”

His report continues:

Keeping the trend from previous years, our two leading industry segments were the food industry and the plastics industry with many of our food customers starting to get into the plastics side by making their own containers. We also complete many general industrial-type projects as well. We completed over 2,000 projects with a project being anywhere from 20-hours to 36,000-hours. We quoted over 2,000 potential projects and were awarded close to 50% of them. We are carrying about 30% of our active quotes over to 2024.

Why is our business staying solid and why are we growing? The reason is simple, our success and growth stems from our talented and committed employees combined with our strategic-thinking and valued customers. Another big thank you to both.

From an employee standpoint, we feel very blessed to have the highly skilled, customer-focused employees that we do. We continue to invest in our employees through both informal mentoring, formal on-the-job training, and on-site training from our own certified Training Team. Being a family-owned organization, we truly believe that we are able to offer a culture that is unique in many ways. We work with Upper Valley Career Center in Piqua and Apollo Career Center in Lima to continue to add new talent. Partnering with the Shelby County Workforce Partnership team has also been invaluable.

What does 2024 have in store for us as a business? We have four large projects already in the backlog. We have over 100 quotes for the month of January. New opportunities continue to develop and our existing customers continue to build and upgrade plants and processes while keeping us as a part of their team along the way. With all of that said, we do not see any reason that things will change.

We will continue to support our customers and value our employees every step along the way. By following our mission statement, “Treat the customer and my co-worker as I would like to be treated” and our company culture statement of WALK IN TRUTH TM Trust – Respect – Understand – Teach – Honesty, we look forward to a great 2024 and beyond……

God bless to all, and we wish everyone a safe and prosperous 2024!