Haas Automation is about halfway through building a massive factory outside of Las Vegas, but company executives say it’s going to complement, not replace, their home base in Oxnard.
Haas is the biggest machine tool manufacturer in the United States, and one of the biggest private-sector employers in Ventura County with 1,700 employees in Oxnard. In 2012, Haas announced it would expand outside California rather than in Oxnard, and in 2019, its founder, owner and CEO, Gene Haas, bought land for that expansion in Henderson, Nevada, a suburb just south of Las Vegas.
About a year ago, Haas Automation broke ground on a 2.4-million-square-foot, $350 million factory in Henderson, said Peter Zierhut, Haas’ vice president for outside operations. The walls are now up and the roof is on, he said, and construction will be finished next year. The company plans to start operating there in early 2027.
Once the Henderson facility is up and running, Haas plans to move a few hundred jobs there. But Oxnard will remain the company’s headquarters and will still have about 1,000 employees, Zierhut said.
“We’re still committed to Ventura County, and we will still have a good presence here,” he said.
Haas Automation does not plan to close any part of its million-square-foot facility on Sturgis Road in northeastern Oxnard, Zierhut said. The factory there will keep running, and the company’s back-office operations and executive offices will stay in Oxnard.
The company has started talking to its employees about whether they’d like to transfer from the coast to the desert. The goal, Zierhut said, is to move about 300 or 400 people after the Nevada facility opens.
Haas expected to stay in Ventura County
Haas Automation makes machine tools, which are automated mills, lathes and other machines that shape metal and other materials to create finished manufactured products. The company generates about $1.2 billion a year in sales.
“Haas could be the most important player we have” in the Ventura County economy, said Bruce Stenslie, the CEO of the Economic Development Collaborative, a nonprofit that advocates for a strong business climate in Ventura County and the surrounding region.
Ventura County’s biggest employers are government agencies, including the U.S. Navy and the County of Ventura. Among private businesses, Amgen employs about three times as many people as Haas in Ventura County, and Amazon employs more than Haas in Oxnard.
But Stenslie said Haas is unique among private businesses in offering so many well paying jobs that don’t require advanced degrees. In 2019, according to Haas’ pitch to the Henderson City Council, the company’s workers earned an average of about $70,000 per year.
Haas also has suppliers in the area that give it a total impact that is “way bigger than that 1,700-employee footprint,” Stenslie said.
He said the new Nevada facility does not make him worry about Haas’ future in Ventura County. It’s normal for any large manufacturer to spread its factories out geographically, he said, to hedge against natural disasters or other problems that might only affect one location. Haas also has big investments in both people and real estate that make the company unlikely to walk away from Ventura County.
“I’m confident they’re going to stay here,” Stenslie said. “I’m disappointed that won’t be growing here, but I’m still thrilled that they’re here.”
Alex Nguyen, Oxnard’s city manager, said that as long as the Nevada facility is for expansion and not relocation, the effect on Oxnard’s economy should be “minimal.”
“My main concern is jobs for Oxnard residents, and if those are the ones leaving, then I am concerned,” he said.
Gene Haas met with Trump in Oval Office
Haas Automation is adding the Nevada factory because it expects its business to keep growing. Right now, though, the company’s growth is held back by the tariffs President Donald Trump has put on imports from most of the rest of the world.
Haas imports about 100 million pounds a year of cast iron for its machines and smaller quanities of other materials. The United States doesn’t have many cast iron foundries, and China is the world’s leading producer. When Trump’s tariffs were first imposed, Haas estimated that it stood to lose about $40 million a year just for extra cast iron costs.
“As this thing has unfolded, we’ve continued to move to sources outside of China,” Zierhut said. “We’re doing our best to move to other countries, but sometimes we find something in a country with lower tariffs, in India or Brazil, and then the president raises tariffs on that country.”
Haas’ customers are other manufacturing companies, and Zierhut said that due to tariffs on their industries, they’re “a little leery” of making big purchases. Sales at Haas went down significantly when the tariffs were first announced, but Zierhut said they’ve made a comeback since then.
Gene Haas has personally lobbied the president for tariff relief, meeting with Trump in the Oval Office in August, Zierhut said.
There was some talk of Haas’ Formula One racing team, but the main topic was tarrifs, Zierhut said.
“The meeting was scheduled for 20 minutes, and it ended up being 40, so that’s a good sign,” Zierhut said. “I think it was a success. … There were some promising things as far as getting a little relief, but nothing has come of it yet.”
Zierhut said Haas made no campaign contribution or other payment for the White House meeting. Wired magazine reported in March that business leaders were paying as much as $5 million to a political action committee for private meetings with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Haas has made numerous political donations in the past, to both Democrats and Republicans, but never to Trump or any other presidential candidate, according to data on the Federal Elections Commission website.
In addition to Haas Automation, the Formula One team and his $300 million charitable foundation, Gene Haas owns a nationwide real estate portfolio. In Henderson, his real estate play goes beyond his company’s new factory. His real esate investment company bought 279 acres from the city of Henderson, for $27 million, in a public bidding process. It was once federal land, but in 2008 the Bureau of Land Management gave 500 acres to the city to sell for commercial development.
According to his company’s 2019 proposal to the Henderson City Council, the first phase of development on the property will be Haas Automation’s factory. Later, a second phase will include as many as 20 smaller industrial buildings, to be used by Haas Automation or leased or sold to other companies, including vendors supplying Haas. A third phase could include retail development.
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Haas Automation ‘committed to Ventura County’ despite Nevada expansion
Reporting by Tony Biasotti, Ventura County Star / Ventura County Star
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