Courtesy / Harvey Performance Co.
Harvey Performance Co. broke ground in June on it new facility at 49 Raceway Drive in Gorham and expects to move in next summer.
Updated: December 23, 2019
Helical Solutions is building new plant. In tight industrial market, its current space already draws queries
Courtesy / Loopnet
Helical Solutions LLC sold 29 Sanford Dr. in Gorham for $1.75 million and holds a leaseback until its new plant, some five miles away, is completed.
Helical Solutions LLC, a B2B tool manufacturer, sold its industrial facility in Gorham, and continues to operate there on a leaseback of up to 18 months before it will be moving into a new plant that’s now under construction.
The listing drew a lot of interest from investors, and now is drawing interest from prospective tenants who are eyeing space that’s expected to be available by early 2021.
Helical Solutions LLC sold 29 Sanford Dr. in Gorham to Berzinis Realty LLC for $1.75 million. Justin Lamontagne and Greg Hastings from NAI The Dunham Group brokered the sale, which closed Sept. 30.
The 21,360-square-foot manufacturing and industrial facility on 1.96 acres is in the Gorham Industrial Park. The property was offered for sale with a leaseback by Helical Solutions as its new Gorham facility, about five miles away, is under construction.
Lamontagne, who represented Helical Solutions, said he proposed marketing the property, with the leaseback, ahead of the company’s move to its new plant.
“I discussed the possibility of putting it on the market sooner to capitalize on what’s historically a hot market and shed the headache of trying to sell it a year from now when they’re also moving into a brand-new facility,” he said.
The listing received multiple offers from southern Maine investors who understand the industrial market and the lack of inventory, he said.
Long runway
“It’s very unlikely that we’ll add so much inventory that vacancy rates are going to greatly increase anytime soon,” he added.
Because it’s known that Helical Solutions will be leaving, “We’ve got a long runway to find a perfect replacement tenant,” he said. “And we’ve already got a small handful of companies interested in the building. This building would cost a fortune to build new, and there’s very little inventory like it on the industrial market.”
Lamontagne noted that this property and another industrial building he recently brokered, at 47 Spring Hill Road in Saco, set record high prices per square foot for industrial buildings in Gorham and Saco.
The fully air-conditioned plant was built in 1991 and expanded in 2011. It comes with 3-phase power, utility trenches throughout and 22-foot ceiling heights. It has multiple loading docks with overhead doors and ample parking.
Helical Solutions is a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvey Performance Co. LLC in Rowley, Mass. Harvey acquired Helical in 2015.
Harvey Performance broke ground in June on it new facility at 49 Raceway Drive in Gorham. The facility will manufacture the company’s Helical Solutions line of high-performance end mills and serve as the company’s innovation hub.
The company partnered on the construction with Portland-based commercial real estate developer Northland Enterprises. The design was completed by Cambridge, Mass., architecture firm SMMA. The builder is Landry/French Construction.
The new plant is well underway, said Steve Vatcher, vice president of operations.
Triple the size
Courtesy / SMMA
Harvey Performance Co. is building a new facility in Gorham to manufacture its Helical Solutions line of high-performance end mills and serve as the company’s innovation hub.
“We have all of the steel structures in place,” he said. “We’re running a race against winter now, to get it weather-tight by the end of the year, so we can do the interior work during the winter. We expect to move in mid-June 2020.”
The new 79,000-square-foot manufacturing facility is more than triple the size of the current facility.
What’s driving the need for expansion?
“Our products have been very well received in the marketplace, so we’re growing rapidly,” Vatcher said. “The new building is giving us room to continue to grow our volume and expand our product lines.”
Revenue growth continues to outpace the market, he said. The company’s biggest market currently is aerospace.
“But we’re growing quite a bit in the medical field,” he added. “That’s one of the bigger growth areas for us.”
Over the past year, the company added about 20 employees, making a workforce of about 110 people now.
“I expect our growth to continue at a similar rate going forward,” Vatcher said. “I could see us adding another 15 people in the next year or so.”
Logistics of the move will mean operating at both locations for the first couple of months, he said.
“Our customers aren’t going to take those months off, and neither are we,” he said. “Our plan is to do a lot of work to prepare for the move so we have inventory in place, and we’ll operate both simultaneously for some period of time.”
The new facility will have a small research and development lab.
“We’ll be able to do demonstrations of our products there and R&D work to optimize some of the running parameters of those products,” said Vatcher.
There were advantages to selling the existing property before moving into the new facility.
“It gave us the ability to check that off our to-do list,” Vatcher said.
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