Kurt Hydraulics last month announced the opening of its new, centrally-located hydraulic hose warehouse in Fridley, Minnesota, approximately 3 miles from its headquarters. This allows for enhanced customer service, optimized logistics, and the ability to provide a more extensive range of hydraulic hose. The new location, strategically chosen for its accessibility and proximity to major transportation networks, ensures improved delivery times for customers across the U.S.
According to Scott Czupryna, National Sales Manager at Kurt Hydraulics, the company has been continuously expanding since it developed its hose and fittings lines in 2000. Kurt moved some of its hose storage from its Pueblo, Colorado facility, back to Minnesota because they decided it was more important to have it all closer to its corporate headquarters. The new warehouse is about 40,000 square feet, adding to the corporate headquarters’ 602,000 square feet.
The warehouse is strictly for hydraulic hose storage and will not be used for any of Kurt’s other product lines. Fittings are stored at Kurt’s facility in Nebraska, which is where they are manufactured.
In addition to adding four new employees, the warehouse boasts the following:
- Over 1,000 pallet locations, providing ample room for an expanding range of Kurt hydraulic hoses.
- Centralized Minnesota location — enhances Kurt Hydraulics’ ability to efficiently serve customers across the region and beyond. Located at 117 Osborne Rd, Fridley, MN 55432
- Improved delivery times with streamlined logistics — strategically positioned to significantly improve delivery times — ensuring that customers receive their orders promptly.
- Additional space — allows Kurt Hydraulics to maintain a larger inventory, offering customers an even more extensive selection of hydraulic hose products to meet diverse industry needs.
The facility allows Kurt to be more automated in its hydraulic hose operations, said Czupryna. “We are going to a whole new barcoding system, which we didn’t have before. Some of the handling equipment is being automated to handle the hose, such as new winders, reeling equipment, and saws with automated evacuation for the particulate that comes out during hose cutting.
“And now we’re doing some green activity. We’re going with all electric forklift trucks,” Czupryna said. “And we’re looking at more automation in the future by going to an automated forklift truck.”
Czupryna added that like many fluid power companies, Kurt Hydraulics is still very much in growth mode because hydraulics is indispensable in many applications.
“Fluid power has three things going for it that should help keep things going in the right direction,” he said. “We’ve got automation, we’ve got reshoring, and we’ve got the infrastructure spending, which is all good because you can’t build a road or fix a bridge without hydraulics.”
Finally, he said that this expansion is just part of the overall growth and automation that’s been occurring at Kurt Hydraulics over the last several years. “We have three new robotically fed machining centers for making fittings. And we’ve been upgrading a lot of our more automated screw-style machines,” Czupryna said. “We’ve done a lot of capitalization for this business. We’ve always been a U.S. company, and we’re doing everything we can to keep up with the market because it’s growing. We’re going be here for the long run, which is really great for our customers and for our employees.”
Kurt hydraulics
www.kurthydraulics.com
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