“Made in America” Strategy Necessitates 2nd Plant for Scorpion Performance

(SANEPR.com) June 8, 2009 -- Fort Lauderdale, FL ( Sanepr ) June 8, 2009 - Scorpion Performance, Inc., an American manufacturer of precision parts for high performance engines, intends to triple existing output by opening a second plant this year in Ocala, Florida. Scorpion founder, Robert Stopanio, attributes the need for expansion to an increasing demand for American-made products, as well as to the company’s ability and determination to outperform China and its Asian counterparts on both price and quality levels – and certainly on faster delivery.

Scorpion’s positioning statement, “Made in America & Proud of It,” has attracted the attention of everyone from high performance car owners to warehouse distributors of performance auto parts. “The response has been so positive we have to expand our capacity to meet the demand,” says Stopanio. “Our customers want to support the American economy by buying American-made products. Plus, we are maxed-out at our Fort Lauderdale facility and need a building that will enable us to configure our robotic cells for utmost efficiency.”

Scorpion takes particular pride in being an industry leader in the use of the most sophisticated robotically operated machine tools. Stopanio states, “The robots run around the clock, seven days a week. By operating three shifts per day, Scorpion has achieved dramatic cost efficiencies.”

A year ago, Scorpion was capable of producing a single rocker arm from raw aluminum stock to a finished product in three minutes. Now, the newest generation of multi-spindle lathes, further tweaked by Scorpion’s engineers and reconfigured to work with a single robotic cell, produce a finished rocker arm every minute. That’s a 200% increase in output!

The Scorpion Performance brand leads the industry with its principal product, rocker arms, that account for greater horsepower by regulating the intake and exhaust valves on high performance engines. In addition to rocker arms, the company has also started manufacturing lifters, pushrods, valves and valve springs, which it markets and distributes through a new company, Scorpion Racing Products. At the same time, the company is looking to recapture that portion of the precision auto parts business that has wandered offshore, no matter what brand name they are marketed under.

Just how great are overseas expenditures by automotive manufacturers? According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. automotive industry is far and away the greatest “consumer” of imported products. This, of course, reflects the impact of Far Eastern and European auto companies that do final assembly of their cars and trucks in U.S. plants. In 2005, motor vehicles valued at $142 billion were imported into the U.S., which represented 39% of automotive expenditures for that year.

In addition, Motor Vehicle Parts, a separate category, ranked No. 3 at $71 billion among some 50 industry categories in the import derby. And that represented almost half of sales of auto parts in the United States.

Stopanio acknowledges that Scorpion Performance represents but a microcosm of the business being “lost” to overseas sources, yet he feels just as strongly as multi-billion-dollar companies that U.S. manufacturers have to innovate and fight back on world-market terms, especially in today’s economy.

Contact:
Media Relations Department
Scott Reynolds, Director of Advertising & Branding
Phone: 954-779-3600
Fax: 954-779-3029

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