Part of Manufacturing Day tour by governor

Friday was National Manufacturing Day and, to mark the occasion, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine made a stop in Lawrence County.

The governor paid a visit to AmSty in Ironton, where he and staff took a tour of the facility.

It was one of a number of visits he made on the theme that day, with the governor stopping at Pentaflex in Springfield and PR Machine Works in Ontario before making his way to AmSty.

“Ohio has always been a manufacturing state,” DeWine said, following the tour. “I think people are paying a lot more attention to manufacturing, now that we have Intel and other companies coming into the state.”

Intel hosted a groundbreaking this year on a new microchip plant in Licking County, a $20 billion facility, expected to be the largest of its kind in the world.

“So what I’ve spent today doing – we’ve really been from one end of Ohio to the other,” DeWine said. “We just went to Mansfield and it’s really just going to different manufacturing sites and talking to the employees, talking to people and really trying to make sure everybody in Ohio understands how important manufacturing is.”

AmSty, located on County Road 1A in Ironton, is a producer of polystyrene and styrene monomer.

Ryan Augsburger, of the Ohio Manufacturing Association, accompanied DeWine on the tour.

“Manufacturing is by far largest sector of the Ohio economy, the private sector,” he said. “It’s innovation that’s driving great products all over the state of Ohio and while today is Manufacturing Day in Ohio and across the country, every day is Manufacturing Day in Ohio, thanks to Gov. DeWine and his administration. They’re doing good things and driving investment in the manufacturing sector. This sector has been growing consistently over decades and we’re looking hard to encourage that to continue.”

DeWine said that manufacturing takes many different forms in the state.

“I think it’s important for the governor to get out to talk and mostly to listen to the people running these facilities and the people working here,” he said. “And it’s important we let the young people know this is a place they could make a living.”

The governor said that manufacturing for them is different from what it was in their parents’ generation.

“It’s high tech jobs and it’s extremely exciting,” he said. “My goal for every young person in Ohio is for them to find something they get excited about, something they want to get up every morning and do.”

Plant manager Jennifer Hellmich said they appreciated DeWine’s visit.

“He recognizes everything that goes into making place like this operate every day,” she said.

Following his stop at AmSty, DeWine also paid a surprise visit to Tanks Memorial Stadium at Ironton High School for the school’s homecoming game against Dawson-Bryant High School.