Steel and iron industries improve

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - The recession hit Gartland Foundry hard in 2008 and 2009.

Now, President Bill Grimes is grateful the company is doing so well.

"Our business fell off about 40 percent so we had a huge impact to climb out of," Grimes said.

A national iron manufacturing company, Gartland Foundry has been operating for over 100 years.

"Some people haven't fully recovered," he said.

While many companies in the area continue to struggle, numbers across the board are looking good.

Westfield Steel is a smaller company.

They were hit just as hard and have made back 25 percent of the business they lost.

"We're still trying to dig ourselves out. We're no where near where we were before the recession, but we're coming back," Westfield Steel Plant Manager Ralph Mills said.

They're starting to see more new business, making bigger and heavier duty projects, and are making moves to prepare for the future.

"We're taking the time to do some internal training and strengthening of our own internal processes again, position ourselves for when even greater things come along," Mills said.

"I don't expect it to ever the same, and I'm not going to pretend that it's going to come back with out changing our business to be successful regardless of what the economy does," Westfield Steel CFO Fritz Prine said.

For now, these companies are counting their blessings and hopeful with where they are headed.

"We're lucky, we're running max two shifts, five days, sometimes six days a week, so we're very fortunate to be as busy. This is as busy as we're going to get," Grimes said.

"It's a great feeling," Mills said.

Westfield Steel wants to hire more employees to be able to fill orders that are beginning to come.