Kimber Announces New Manufacturing Facility in Alabama

by Richard Johnson

Published: January 10th, 2018

kimber announces new manufacturing facility in alabama

Kimber Manufacturing recently announced the company will be building a new engineering and manufacturing facility in City of Troy, Alabama. The new facility will double the company’s manufacturing capacity, something the company has identified as a significant step in meeting increased demand for its products.

The company stated that prior expansions of its Montana and New York facilities have been overwhelmed as soon as they have been brought online. The new facility in Alabama represents “a significant new plateau of capacity.”

According to Kimber, the new facility will be a “state-of-the-art engineering and manufacturing facility” that will make use of modern automation techniques. The company expects to open the facility in 2019.

Alabama universities

Troy is located in the southern portion of Alabama, situated between Dothan and Montgomery. It is the home of Troy University and Auburn University is only about 90 minutes away.

The city already has a significant manufacturing base with companies like Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin with facilities that employ hundreds of people.

While many gun sales in 2017 may have been driven by a significant drop in prices, it would seem that demand for Kimber products – at profitable prices – increased. Enough for the company to build a new facility. Of course, this may also be a prelude to moving the company out of the clearly anti-gun state of New York to a state that is more in line with the company’s business goals.

#Kimber #CompanyNews #Alabama

Richard Johnson

An advocate of gun proliferation zones, Richard is a long time shooter, former cop and internet entrepreneur. Among the many places he calls home is http://www.gunsholstersandgear.com/.

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Marcus D. on Jan 11, 2018

Under the former California Attorney General Kamala Harris, a change in manufacturing technique was considered a "material change" to a firearm, sufficient to subject that firearm to the microstamping law. Which means if the gun did not incorporate microstamping, it could no longer be sold here. For Ruger, this meant that when they changed a takedown lever from cast to MIM, it was a material change, and the gun therefore had to satisfy all existing pistol requirements and could not be grandfathered in based on the previously approved version. For Colt, when it went over to a new plant with CNC machining, it was enough to exclude all Colt pistols from the state. So I have to wonder what a new plant in Alabama will do to Kimber's sales here.

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- Burningwar on Jan 11, 2018
  
  @Marcus D. Nothing, if they do it right. Beretta interchanges a number of their rostered models between Italy, the old MD plant, and the new TN plant without issue. Kimber already makes frozen-in-place "CA specials," just like the traitors at Springfield Armory do. Colt's long been a dying husk of a company stumbling about, and Glock's ownership pattern between the US and Austria mean Glock USA has little to no legal relation to Glock GmBH, other than a single businessman owns both (CA's excuse as to why US made Glocks are specifically excluded from the CA roster). For Ruger, the change was also that they changed supplier for the part, which is CA's excuse for why Ruger's SR9 was de-listed (which triggered Ruger to delist all of their semi-autos, with S&W following suit up to the point where S&W decided to not follow suit).
  
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- Marcus D. on Jan 11, 2018
  
  @burningwar To make the Roster, a gun either has to be a continuation of an existing Rostered model or it has to comply with the most recent state safety mandates, which now include, aside from the microstamping rule, a manual safety, a LCI, and a magazine disconnect safety. The DOJ has really tightened the screws as to what updates a company can make to a product and retain its Rostered status. Aside from Colt dying (repeatedly), they moved to CNC manufacturing for all of their 1911s, and that was enough to trigger the microstamp mandate. For Springfield, none of their Croatian models have manual safeties or magazine disconnects, so only the original XD model is sold here. Glock is pretty much the same; I think they can sell only through Gen III. But since the market is so large, both continue to produce those older models.The US made Glock models, although identical to the German made guns, were treated by the DOJ as a "new" firearm, and thus they could not qualify for the Roster without a manual safety, LCI and disconnector. Hence my concern about Kimber opening a new plant whose pistol products may not qualify for the California Roster at all, which will be a problem for Kimber if the NY plant is closed.
  What it really comes down to is that the past AG (Harris) and the current AG will use any available excuse to reduce the number of semiautomatic firearms on the Roster.
  
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- Angry_Dad on Jan 14, 2018
  
  @burningwar Sturm Ruger and Co. has always been a company of sound and solid principles.
  
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Cosmoline 'n' Coke on Jan 12, 2018

1. Who cares about NYC? Let Kimber move where they’re welcome and can enjoy freedom. Their employees can also have a hard think about whether they should be living in a place that refuses to honor the Bill of Rights.
2. As for Commiefornia, see #1.

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