The Caterpillar Inc. motor grader plant in North Little Rock plans to add a third shift and 125 workers by the fourth quarter of this year, General Manager Paul Rivera told Arkansas Business on Friday.
The 700,000-SF plant employs about 550 but "we’re on our way to 675 later on this year," Rivera said.
The growth comes amid rising global demand for Caterpillar’s line of heavy machinery.
Speaking in Little Rock in October, Caterpillar CEO Doug Oberhelman said 45 percent of the North Little Rock plant’s production is devoted to exports.
Rivera declined to reveal the number of motor graders that the North Little Rock plant makes yearly, calling it proprietary information. But he said the plant is now at 50 percent capacity and would reach full capacity and 900 total workers by the end of 2013 or early 2014.
Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, has produced graders since 1931. The large tractors, which use giant blades to flatten the earth, are used to build and maintain roads. Caterpillar has four other motor grader plants around the world: two in China, one in Brazil and one in Decatur, Ill.
In 2009, the company invested $140 million to make the former Deluxe Video Service Inc. plant in North Little Rock the new North American home for its motor grader lines. Production at the plant began in 2010. Oberhelman has said the company sees the North Little Rock plant as a "long-term, strategic step."
Caterpillar employs 150,000 worldwide and reported sales and revenue of $60.14 billion in 2011. That was an increase of 41 percent over 2010 and an 83 percent increase in profit, to $4.93 billion.
Earlier this year, the company predicted sales and revenue in 2012 at between $68 billion and $72 billion.
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