Gutknecht tours Norwood

Congressman

impressed

by calendar

production facility in Sleepy Eye

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

SLEEPY EYE -- When 1st District Congressman Gil Gutknecht's tour of the world's largest calendar printing plant had ended Thursday, Norwood Promotions' officials had Gutknecht's promise to help them find non-calendar printing jobs to carry the plant over its cyclical slow times.

Gutknecht, who was accompanied by Rep. Brad Finstad, R-New Ulm, told General Manager Warren Harris, over a lunch provided by the City of Sleepy Eye, "there's a lot of material that requires printing in every congressman's office, particularly during an election year, and I'll get the word out to them that you're available."

Finstad added that he would spread the word at the State Capitol, as well.

While Norwood is turning out printed calendars of all types like never before, "people just seem to only want them in the last half of the year," Harris said.

At the present time, the firm has about 500 full-time employees. Historically it has laid off some workers during the slow months and then geared up with as many as 200 additional employees for the July-to-December run.

"We generate 60 percent of our revenue from September through December," Director of Operations Pat Doyle explained.

"This past year we generated over $60 million in sales so you can see we do a big chunk in the last quarter," Harris added. "We've been trying to use incentives to even it out, but there aren't enough that want to take advantage of those incentives."

Harris said there should be some improvement this year because a Norwood plant in Washington, Iowa, is being shut down, and its production and some equipment is being transferred to Sleepy Eye. So, the plant expects its annual revenue to increase to $90 million.

"But, the layoffs in January are a morale problem that we'd like to eliminate," Harris continued. "We figured that, as 2004 is an election year, there should be some election posters that we could print."

"It's not just the posters and campaign materials," Gutknecht responded. "There's a lot of literature that goes out of my office and every other congressman's office during the year. They'll be glad to hear that there's a place here that can take care of them."

During the tour, Gutknecht and Finstad saw the production process at work, passing the sales area where an estimated 270,000 orders will be taken this year, the pre-press department where calendar jobs are readied for printing, the huge rolls carrying seven miles of paper and the giant Heidelberg off-set presses that eat up a huge paper roll in a matter of minutes.

As he was leaving, Gutknecht said he was glad to have finally seen the Norwood plant.

"I never dreamed there was a plant like this here."