Company picks new BR site

• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Oct 29, 2009 - Page: 6B

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Orion Instruments LLC announced a $5 million investment Wednesday that will move the firm close to Cortana Mall while boosting employment from 70 to 105.

At Orion’s Industriplex site in southeast Baton Rouge, General Manager Don Sanders cast about for metaphors that could explain the firm’s growth to an announcement event crowd.

He stole a page from his 27-year-old son, Dustin, a U.S. Air Force pilot stationed in Columbus, Miss. What turn of a phrase, Sanders had asked his son, do pilots use when they launch their after-burners?

“Hold on,” Don Sanders said, priming the crowd for the phrase as Mayor-President Kip Holden and Gov. Bobby Jindal stood at his flanks. “We’re going to light the torches.”

Since the day after 9/11, when Orion opened its doors, company sales have zoomed from zero to $17 million in eight years. To commemorate that growth, welder Hue Nguyen, of Baton Rouge, and production scheduler Kristy Moss, of Gonzales, unfurled a banner from the rafters of their 18,000-square-foot building, a banner reading “great people, great spirit, great companies” and picturing a new 43,500-square-foot building that will house staff beginning in October 2010 on Oak Villa Boulevard, just north of Cortana Mall.

Privately held, Orion is a subsidiary of Magnetrol International Inc., a Chicago area manufacturer of products that measure process flow and fluid levels in petrochemical plants, at offshore oil rigs and at power plants and other industrial facilities. Orion’s magnetic float systems coupled to radar transmitters give customers remote-sensing technology with multiple ways to transmit readings.

Orion overcame the financial aftershocks of 9/11, hurricane and business challenges to make Magnetrol “No. 1 in the world in the (magnetic level indicator) business,” Sanders said. “We see our business as having a tremendous upside for us. We’re looking to do more expansions.”

For now, the Cortana-area site will suffice. Plans by Chenevert Architects allow for doubling the 43,500-square-foot facility in the future, and Orion conceivably could be ready for another move in eight years, Sanders said.

Beyond its patented technology, Orion invests heavily in engineering design skills and language skills while creating a family-like work environment, Sanders said. Seven languages are spoken regularly at Orion.

“That’s by design,” Sanders said. “We knew we wanted to be a global organization.”

Many of Orion’s flanged, stainless steel tubular instruments are exported at a cost of thousands for customers who want precise, reliable readings, said Sanders and his wife, Liz, who is human resources manager.

State and local officials touted the retention of Orion — a company that might have moved to Houston or Mobile, Ala. — as a key win for Baton Rouge. The additional jobs will carry salaries of $40,000 a year, plus benefits.

“Research-driven jobs powered by knowledge are probably best-postured for growth in Louisiana,” said Adam Knapp, president of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, which learned about Orion’s needs when BRAC site retention program leader Steve Sparks visited the company in 2006. “That program exists because the business community invested the resources to make that happen.”