Officials from the Southern Ohio Port Authority (SOPA), Fluor B&W Portsmouth, the city of Portsmouth and the village of New Boston — along with members of the community — gathered Thursday afternoon to celebrate the opening of Mako Finished Products in Portsmouth.
“Last November, it started out as an idea. The owner of Mako came to me, he wanted to go into business and laid out what he wanted to do,” said Larry O’Dell, operations manager for Mako Finished Products. “I told him at the time I was not going to say no, but I had to figure out how to say yes.”
O’Dell said they looked at several different sites in Portsmouth as a potential location.
“The more we got talking to the people at Sole Choice, they seemed like they were on the same page we were on, keeping people working and bringing business back,” O’Dell said.
Once the location was chosen, he said they started ordering machines.
O’Dell said the community has made them feel welcome and were very accommodating. Representatives from Fluor B&W Portsmouth were on hand to present Mako with a $30,000 check from their Opportunity Fund.
“Jason (Kester, SOPA executive director) has been invaluable throughout the whole process. The port authority has brought a lot of these groups together that normally would not be together otherwise,” O’Dell said.
Mako Finished Products is operating in about 12,000 square feet of the Sole Choice Building on Murray Street in Portsmouth.
“It’s very exciting that we are ‘reshoring’ jobs from overseas,” Kester said.
From Portsmouth Daily Times | By Wayne Allen
October 2, 2014
