Jamestown, state officials tour businesses that received automation grants

JAMESTOWN — State and local officials went on a tour of three businesses in Jamestown on Friday, Dec. 13, that highlighted recipients of the Automate ND Grant Program.

The tour included stops at Champ Industries USA Inc., Agri-Cover Inc. and Midmach.

Champ Industries received a $240,500 grant for an automated tool-loading brake press.

“This program helped a lot,” said Kyle Johnson, plant manager at Champ Industries. “Automation is definitely something that we were going towards, and this allowed us to take the first step much sooner than we anticipated.”

Agri-Cover received a nearly $283,000 grant for robot arms and autonomous carts. Midmach received $500,000 for three robotic welding cells.

The North Dakota Development Fund received $5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding for a grant program during the 2023 legislative session. The program was developed in response to the workforce shortage in North Dakota, according to the North Dakota Department of Commerce’s website.

The one-time program made grants of up to $500,000 available to primary-sector certified businesses in North Dakota. The grants could not be more than 50% of the machinery, equipment or software being purchased.

“We’ve had legislators reach out to us with interest in advancing and sponsoring a bill to run it into the future and create something or at least do another one-time funding,” said David Lehman, advanced manufacturing business development manager for the state Commerce Department.

The Automate ND Grant Program had 42 applicants with $13 million in requests in a three-month application window from 21 communities, said Shayden Akason, deputy director of economic development and finance with the state Commerce Department. He said 18 applicants were funded from 13 communities.

“It just showed the type of demand and interest that companies have in automation to help their workforce challenges,” he said. “ … The quality of those applications, we probably would have funded another dozen of them. That’s how good they were and that’s how competitive the process was.”

The state needs about 30,000 to 40,000 people to fill its workforce gap, Lehman said. He said the manufacturing sector has around 26,000 to 29,000 employees in the state.

“If you took every graduating high school student and every graduating college student, we still wouldn’t fill our workforce gap in North Dakota,” he said.

Lehman said there are three ways for the state to dig itself out of the workforce issue — improving processes, focusing on Visa workers and legal immigration to increase workforce and automation.

“If you can’t, if you can’t improve your processes, you can’t get enough people, then you have to automate it,” he said.

Lehman said automation can be difficult in the short term because the state doesn’t have a strong infrastructure for it and the upfront costs are more expensive.

“But in the long term, so North Dakota, who has consistently been in the top three lowest unemployment states since the Bakken hit, has the opportunity,” he said. “So it’s painful now, but as we automate, it should make us more productive and better.”

Akason said workforce is the No. 1 challenge to expansion and economic development in North Dakota. He said the one-time Automate ND Grant Program was created to help alleviate the workforce shortage and keep manufacturers competitive so they can maintain or expand their market share.

Masaki Ova joined The Jamestown Sun in August 2021 as a reporter. He grew up on a farm near Pingree, N.D. He majored in communications at the University of Jamestown, N.D.