New Business Coming to Former Ross Industrial Site

Something new is popping up on an old piece of industrial property on Youngstown’s East Side and it could eventually mean some new jobs for the area.

The owners of Iron City Wood Products recently purchased an 18.5-acre piece of the old Ross Industrial Park along Albert Street. They said they have outgrown their current location on Wilson Avenue in Campbell and plan to expand their pallet recycling business at the new site. Owners said they started looking for new locations a couple years ago and the Youngstown spot caught their eyes as the old buildings that once stood on the Ross Industrial Park site were being demolished.

“Our business requires a lot of land, but a lot of the sites didn’t have developed land and it would have cost an arm and a leg to develop the land ourselves. So as the construction, or I should say the de-construction, of that building took place, it proposed an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up,” said Iron City Wood Products Vice President Tina Yanssens. Her late father, Dave Muslovski, started the company more than 25 years ago.

Iron City supplies refurbished and recycled wood pallets to companies that ship products to steel-making businesses and then buys many of those pallets back from the mills and sells them again. But the owners said the new location will allow Iron City to branch out to other industries and grow its customer base.“We’re going to be able to expand into the grocery industry more than we are currently. Those pallets need to be clean and out of the dirt that we have here at the current facility,” Yanssens said.

She said the industrial park site will provide space to store incoming pallets, while the building in the back of the property will eventually be used as a production facility. That could lead them to eventually hire more employees. Currently, the business has about 60 workers, but Yanssens said they would like to add another 20 to get back to levels the company had three or four years ago before the economy slumped.

Source: Article on Vindy.com By David Skolnick