IMS Gear to dedicate new manufacturing facility in Virginia Beach

IMS Gear will officially dedicate its new 112,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Virginia Beach on Friday, Oct. 3.

The building at 489 Progress Lane is nearly three times the size of the company’s original Virginia Beach facility.

“We looked at several different locations for this expansion before deciding to stay in Virginia Beach,” Guenter Weissenseel, president of IMS Gear Virginia Inc., said in a statement. “Community is important to us as well as the ability to find and keep skilled workers. We ultimately decided that staying in Virginia Beach is our best option …”

The  company began moving in September 2012 from its first Virginia Beach location at 440 Viking Drive. It took more than a year to move and to get operations up to 24 hours a day.

Founded in 1863 to manufacture precision instruments for the clock and watch industry, IMS has its headquarters in Donaueschingen, Germany.

In 1992, the company decided to follow its customers and expand worldwide. IMS Gear Virginia, Inc. opened in Virginia Beach in 2000. It was the company’s second location in the U.S. after Gainesville, Ga.

Today, IMS Gear has 10 manufacturing facilities around the world, including six in Germany and one each in Mexico and China. It now manufactures gears for every major automobile company in the world.

IMS Gear Virginia manufactures gears for power seats. “We have earned 65 percent of the U.S. automotive gear market,” said Weissenseel. “Our business has multiplied five times in the last five years in Virginia Beach in both production numbers and revenue. We started producing more than one million gears per month last fall and have created more than 150 new jobs to support this growth.”

Maximilian Zimber-Morat, great-grandson of the company founder and majority shareholder, will visit the Virginia Beach facility for the dedication. The event will include tours of the new facility, refreshments and German beer.