Hard-pressed GrafTech, a maker of huge graphite rods for electric furnace steel making, is splitting its now sharply downsized corporate management team from its crucially important engineering team. The move out of Parma will save money.
View full sizeGrafTech is leaving its Parma headquarters. PARMA, Ohio -- GrafTech International is moving its global headquarters to Independence and its research center to Brooklyn Heights.
The cost-saving moves are part of a restructuring that began in September with the announced layoff of about 25 percent of the company's headquarters staff.
Independence offered the company a cash incentive, city records show, once GrafTech announced that it would leave its sprawling 330,000 square-foot Parma facility after 58 years and look for new, smaller facilities in the region.
The relocation is planned to begin in February and be complete by the end of March 2015, said Joel Hawthorne, GrafTech's CEO, in an email.
The company on Thursday said its downsized management team, now consisting of about 50 people, would be able to function in much smaller, more cost-effective office space.
"We continue to execute on our stated goal of creating a more streamlined business model, with greater accountability and cost efficiency," said Hawthorne.
The new headquarters in Independence will be a leased office space of about 23,680 square feet on the third floor of the Park Center Plaza 1 office building on Oak Tree Boulevard in the Rockside Road corridor.
The Independence City Council on Nov. 11 authorized the city administration to offer the company a relocation grant equal to about 50 percent of the annual payroll taxes in the first three years in the city. The city estimated the value of the grant at about $180,000.
GrafTech's research arm -- more critical than ever to meet the company's goal to move away from manufacturing graphite rods for steel making and toward engineered graphite materials for electronics, aerospace and energy industries -- will include about 55 scientists, engineers and marketing employees.
The 23,000 square-foot Innovation and Technology Center in Brooklyn Heights will be located in a leased space in the Keynote Office Center 1, 928 Keynote Circle in the village.
The innovation center will focus its R&D efforts to design prototype technologies and to commercialize specific "next generation technologies," the company said.
Brooklyn Heights Mayor Mike Procuk could not be reached for immediate comment.
Parma Mayor Timothy DeGeeter said Brooklyn Heights and Independence earlier notified Parma, a courtesy under Cuyahoga County's, anti-poaching economic development agreement, that they were talking to GrafTech about relocating.
DeGeeter said the city contacted the company -- about staying -- but GrafTech did not accept its offer and explained that its move was a business decision it had to make.
"At this point, we want to help them market that property. It has easy access to I-480. And we are business friendly," he said.
GrafTech's Lakewood and Sharon Center factories that produced engineered graphite products are not part of the shakeup and will in fact gain a few relocated employees.
GrafTech, in one corporate form or another, has been part of Cleveland's industrial community for 128 years. The company dedicated its Prma research center in September 1956.