On March 7th, Decorah’s Deco Products celebrated their 65th Business Anniversary! Chamber Ambassadors joined CEO Chris Storlie, CFO Kent Kleckner, COO Randy Tangen, Engineering Manager Mike Murphy, Materials Manager Kyle Gilberg, Chief Strategist Douglas Hamilton, HR Manager Barb Breza, and many other employees to cut a red ribbon in recognition and celebration of this milestone.
Deco has been part of Decorah since 1960. (Did you know its name was literally chosen from the first part of the town’s name?) Today, Deco Products employs 200 people.
Deco Products is a Zinc Die Casting Company – the largest of its kind in North America. Zinc alloys have high strength and hardness. This material (one pallet weighs 2,000 lbs!) is delivered almost daily to Deco. In one year, Deco melts down approximately 10 million pounds of zinc and tools it into parts for clients.
This local manufacturing business has a long history of producing window & door access hardware products (Marvin Windows are a top Deco customer – If you have Marvin windows in your house your window sash lock was probably made here in Decorah) but also does many custom castings. More than 100 die cast machines are within the facility. Deco can tool intricate castings to run with tight tolerances, giving them the capacity to produce parts as small as several ounces to as large as 8 lbs.
The first location for Deco was where La Rana Bistro now stands, the second location was at Decorah’s Senior Citizens Hospitality Center, then a building was constructed at the current site. Since that original construction, the facility has been expanded six times – now totaling 150,000 square feet.
Chamber staff and ambassadors were invited to tour the facility following the ribbon cutting. They learned about the raw material (zinc ores are extracted in more than 50 countries with Canada being a top exporter for the smelted – ready to use – zinc alloys), what industry experts are discussing regarding tariffs, the high pressure utilized during the hot chamber zinc die casting process, and how the engineering team picks the right alloy for each client (depending on what is added to the zinc it can have a variety of favorable properties / different characteristics. For example, just 1% of added copper can change strength and hardness.)
