Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen got an up-close look Monday at Hexagon Agility, a growing company that makes composite tanks for alternative fuels.
Pillen met executives of the company and toured its Lincoln facility at the Lincoln Airport’s industrial park.
Hexagon Agility traces its roots to 1963, when it got its start as Lincoln Composites by what was then Brunswick Corp.
In 2005, General Dynamics, which had bought Brunswick, sold Lincoln Composites to Norwegian company Hexagon Composites, and the Lincoln operation a few years later became the first tenant of the airport’s first rail center building.
Now the company occupies five buildings at the industrial park and is in the midst of a $25 million expansion that could see it add up to 100 new employees to its workforce of more than 350 in Lincoln over the next 18 months.
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“It’s a pretty exciting time for us,” said Andy Griffiths, interim president and chief financial officer of Hexagon Agility, which is based in Costa Mesa, California.
Lincoln Airport Executive Director David Haring said that when Hexagon first moved into the industrial park, it helped kick off a period of a half-dozen years of substantial development in the area and it’s good to see the company continue to grow.
“We have been thrilled to see the ongoing growth and expansion of Hexagon Agility recently and look forward to having them as a valuable tenant of the airport for years to come.”
The company, which makes carbon-fiber tanks for storing and transporting compressed natural gas, is one of two main divisions of Hexagon Composites — the other is Hexagon Purus, which makes similar tanks for hydrogen.
Griffiths said Hexagon Agility, which is what the company refers to as its “near-zero” emissions business, provides about 70% of the roughly $500 million in revenue Hexagon Composites does annually.
He cited high growth potential thanks to price advantages with natural gas, the growth of renewable natural gas such as methane, and more and more companies adopting corporate sustainability goals that require them to reduce emissions.
Hexagon Agility produces more than 35,000 carbon-fiber tanks annually in Lincoln and counts large companies such as UPS and Waste Management among its customers.
It also provides its tanks to truck and bus makers, some of which are used by local government agencies such as Lincoln Transportation & Utilities and Metropolitan Utilities District in Omaha.
The company also makes more than 200 truck modules in Lincoln that contain larger tanks and are used as either mobile pipelines to transport gas or as mobile fueling stations.
Griffiths said the use of its products reduced global carbon dioxide emissions by 1.35 million metric tons in 2022, the equivalent of removing about 280,000 automobiles from the road.
Pillen said he was inspired by the “innovation and entrepreneurship” he saw at Hexagon.
He also said Hexagon and other companies in Nebraska need to do a better job of “bragging about how much we pay people.”
The company starts employees at $18 an hour and is willing to hire people without experience, said Bryan Mewhort, vice president of operations.
Despite that, it still struggles to find enough employees, just as many other companies in Lincoln and across Nebraska do.
Pillen said he’s been working with school districts across the state to try to get companies into high schools and match up with students as early as their sophomore year to provide jobs and internships to help produce a more skilled workforce to fill what he called “H3” jobs, which are those that require a high level of skill, provide high wages and are in high demand. class=”print_trim”(tncms-asset)c6d8016d-1922-5307-ba74-bcd96213b458[0](/tncms-asset) class=”print_trim”(tncms-asset)f9114d14-0bbb-5713-9e6d-55c9443db5fc[1](/tncms-asset)
Reach the writer at 402-473-2647 or molberding@journalstar.com.
On Twitter @LincolnBizBuzz.
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