Marysville, Ohio – Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and the ScottsMiracle-Gro Company, the world’s leading marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products, announced today that it is growing its 1,500-associate Marysville campus. Scotts is expanding its existing manufacturing plant and recently broke ground on a new office building to accommodate future growth.
The company also announced it has purchased a new 550,000 square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility in Orrville, Ohio.
ScottsMiracle-Gro employs more than 8,000 associates worldwide, about 1,500 of them in Marysville. The 730-acre Marysville campus is the location of the Company’s corporate headquarters, North American consumer business, Scotts LawnService, Research and Development center and a 1 million square-foot manufacturing facility.
The combined projects announced today will eventually create about 100 additional jobs.
“ScottsMiracle-Gro was founded here in Marysville in 1868 and I am proud that the company’s leaders have chosen to expand their commitment to this community and the State of Ohio,” Governor Strickland said at a ceremony to mark the expansion plans. “This has been one of Ohio’s most successful companies for more than a century and I am hopeful this planned expansion will create new jobs and contribute to the overall success of our economy.”
After obtaining incentives from the State of Ohio and the City of Marysville, the company is adding capacity to its manufacturing facility in order to process a key ingredient in Scotts® EZ Seed®, one of its most successful new products ever. In a limited first year release in 2009, EZ Seed led to a more than 70 percent increase in consumer purchases of lawn patching products. The expansion of the Marysville facility will allow EZ Seed to be distributed nationally in 2010 and in Europe in 2011.
“The launch of EZ Seed was such a success this year that at times we had to scale back our advertising, because we couldn’t make the product fast enough to keep up with consumer demand,” said Jim Hagedorn, chairman and chief executive officer. “We are confident that the expanded manufacturing capacity will allow EZ Seed to continue to be an important product offering for ScottsMiracle-Gro for years to come.”
The new office building on the Marysville campus will open in 2010. The building will alleviate overcrowding in the existing headquarters facility and is designed to promote the type of creativity and collaboration needed in key areas such as marketing and product development. The new building also will house expanded product and merchandising displays to be used in conjunction with key retail partners.
State of Ohio assistance for the projects in Marysville and Orrville included two Job Creation Tax Credits, two Workforce Guarantee grants, and a Roadwork Development grant to the City of Marysville, with a total value of nearly $500,000.
“These expansion efforts are the result of our continued success and reflect our optimism in the future,” Hagedorn said. “They also speak to our commitment to being an important employer in central Ohio. I want to thank Governor Strickland and his team, as well as Union County and Marysville officials, for their continued support of our business and helping us accomplish our goal of making these investments in our hometown.”