Blog

Modine Products have been made in America since 1916: Part 1
Commercial

Modine Products have been made in America since 1916: Part 1

Our values are guided by principles and federal code.

Modine has been putting Americans to work and honoring the U.S. manufacturing heritage since we first began cranking out our famed unit heaters in Racine, Wisconsin in 1916.

We now have HVAC manufacturing plants for our Commercial Products Group in Buena Vista, Virginia and West Kingston, Rhode Island.

Our headquarters is still in Racine, which is home to our sales/marketing; engineering/product development; finance/accounting; and customer/technical service divisions. Our state-of-the-art testing facility here also represents the nation’s tradition of excellence in science and technology.

All told, we employ some 2,872 in the U.S., though we do have some overseas facilities in countries such as Brazil and Germany. Some of the all-American brands we are associated with include John Deere, Caterpillar and Ford Motor.

There is some fairly arcane legal language that helps guide our Made in America values, thanks to Congressional additions to the U.S. code that have prompted companies to keep jobs here and buy components here instead of overseas. Our motivation is driven by our company culture, not legal requirements, but Modine is fully compliant with:

  • The Buy American Act (41 U.S.C. 10a/b/c) was passed in 1933 and requires the federal government to, whenever possible, procure American-made products.
  • The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Section 1605) was passed in 2009 during the Great Recession and requires that all companies contracted for stimulus projects as part of the Recovery Act must purchase domestically manufactured products made of American components.
  • The Buy America Act (49 U.S.C. Section 50101 ) was an adjustment to transportation procurement law that requires all manufactured goods used in transportation-related projects be of domestic origin. Section 5323 of the law requires all steel or iron or manufactured goods be produced in the U.S. for similar projects.

We don’t adhere to these codes just because of legal requirements. We adhere to these codes because it’s the right thing to do.

We will take a closer look at the Modine manufacturing plants in Virginia and Rhode Island in an upcoming post.