The Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance welcomed about a dozen students from Iowa Central Community College and Fort Dodge Senior High School to tour some local manufacturing facilities and learn about the industry in this area on Tuesday. The group visited Elanco Animal Health, CJ Bio America and Cargill.

The Spring Break Manufacturing Tour is a result of the Growth Alliance’s strategic planning for workforce recruitment and retention, said Kelly Halsted, economic development director for the Growth Alliance.

“It was kind of identified that people really don’t know what goes on behind the fences here,” she said. “We want to give them some exposure to manufacturing.”

The manufacturing industry has changed over the last several decades, Halsted said, with the addition of automation and increased cleanliness and safety standards, creating a great environment to start a career.

-Submitted photo
Todd Anderson, external relations coordinator for CJ Bio America, welcomes students to the Fort Dodge facility for a tour and introduction to the manufacturing industry on Tuesday as part of the Greater Fort Dodge Growth Alliance's Spring Break Manufacturing Tour.

At Elanco, the students met Jay Kornder, head of technical services. Kornder said he enjoyed having the students visit and learn about the animal health company and what they do at the Fort Dodge facility.

“It’s nice because we’re always looking for talented people to join our company and it’s a competitive market,” he said. “It’s not just for them to tour us, it’s for us to sell ourselves to them as a potential employer.”

The Elanco facility in northwest Fort Dodge has been a major manufacturer of animal vaccines and medicines for more than 50 years, and has been owned and run by different companies over the years — Fort Dodge Laboratories/Fort Dodge Animal Health, Pfizer Inc., Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica and now Elanco. The name on the front gates of the plant isn’t the only thing that’s changed over the years.

“Since my tenure here, there’s always been capital investment in the facility, new technology and capacity expansion,” Kornder said. “It’s a competitive market, what you can do to differentiate yourself from your competitors as far as efficiencies and costs, sets you up for the future.”

Iowa Central sophomore Alex Bushman is getting ready to graduate with a degree in electrical technologies and though he already has his first job lined up, he wanted to go on Tuesday’s tours to learn more about other manufacturing opportunities in the area.

“I wanted to see what’s out there,” he said. “I’m interested in the technical aspect of it, just like all of the electrical and programming part of it.”

Touring Elanco and CJ Bio America gave Bushman a broader view of the local industry, but he was already familiar with Cargill — he completed an internship with Cargill last summer.

“The scale of things is larger than what I had pictured in my mind before coming today,” he said about Tuesday’s tours.

As Bushman looks ahead to graduation and his future career, he encourages younger students to pay more attention to industries like manufacturing and other trades because they often make steady, high-paying work and lasting careers.

Saige Eddington, a senior at FDSH, was one of a few high schoolers on the tours. She said she’s interested in working at CJ Bio America because both her parents work there.

Eddington plans to enroll in Iowa Central’s welding program before starting her career at CJ Bio America and wanted to get a broader perspective of the local manufacturing industry.

“I’ve learned a lot about how the process of making all these different things are — like vaccines and L-Lysine (an amino acid produced at CJ Bio),” she said. “It’s a very interesting process and I didn’t really think it was as extensive as that.”

This was the first time the Growth Alliance has hosted a manufacturing tour event like this, Halsted said. With the success of Tuesday’s event, Halsted said she thinks this might become a regular event for students on school breaks.

“We’d like to really create awareness to what the opportunities are,” she said.

Kornder said he’d like to see more tours like this at Elanco.

“There’s a lot of people in the community that have no idea what goes on inside Elanco, so it’s nice to show it off and get the word out on what we have and what we do,” he said.