S&C Electric opens 275,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Palatine
Palatine celebrated the arrival of a world-class manufacturing site this week, when S&C Electric Co. opened its doors to the public.
The company has been in business since 1911, operating in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Now the firm has expanded into a second location in Palatine with a new 275,000-square-foot facility at 200 Sellstrom Drive.
S&C assembles products that make the electrical grid more resilient and reliable, including devices that protect substation transformers, circuit switchers and other grid-hardening and self-healing equipment.
An example of the latter is the IntelliTeam SG, which can restore power in seconds.
“What we do here is really build mission-critical electrical grid products and solutions to support the ongoing energy transition,” S&C President and CEO Anders Sjoelin said, “but also at the same time help our customer to keep the power on around the world through a reliable, but even more important, a resilient electrical grid.”
The facility will employ about 200 in machining, assembly, and other skilled trades.
Several dignitaries were on hand Tuesday, including Palatine Mayor Jim Schwantz and Cook County Commissioner Scott Britton. They were treated to a tour of the facility.
“We are not only welcoming a new business to town, but celebrating a community partner that will enrich our community, create new opportunities and drive our economy forward,” Schwantz said.
Britton thanked S&C for staying in Cook County and said it has been his mission in the last six years he has been on the board to “make sure that we have a home for manufacturing in Cook County,” and particularly in his district and Palatine.
In addition, S&C presented the Palatine Library Foundation with a $15,000 grant to support programs in science, technology, engineering, arts and math.
S&C Chief Operating Officer Jim Johnson Jr. said the Palatine location allows the company to expand its capacity for the products that will be assembled at the Sellstrom Drive facility, while freeing up space for continued growth and innovation at the Chicago campus.
Johnson said the transformation of what initially was an empty shell of a building took more than 10 months to complete.
“This site was a blank canvas, allowing us to design a world-class manufacturing facility,” he said.
It called for a heavy lift from S&C staff, including fabrication, facilities, health services, human resources, planning and logistics, product engineering, safety, security, transmission switch assembly, quality and value stream engineering.
He said Palatine is conveniently located, “allowing us to retain our talented, skilled and trained workforce.”
Talent has been S&C’s backbone, and with the new facility, the company can draw talent from the suburbs as it adds new team members.
Sjoelin said it is an exciting time to be in the electrical industry, “whether powering hospitals or data centers or our homes or keeping our wi-fi internet connection going or charging our cellphones or electrical vehicles. Day by day, we increasingly depend on all things electric.”
He said U.S. and global electricity demand is growing at its fastest rate in decades, while severe storms and weather extremes caused by climate change are driving the need for a more reliable and resilient electrical grid.
S&C, he said, is expanding to meet the demand and helping customers to transform the grid, “delivering our vision of an outage free, sustainable electrical energy future.”