Northrop Grumman to expand S.L. facility

SALT LAKE CITY — Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. is increasing its manufacturing capacity in Utah.

The company announced plans Monday to expand its navigation systems division located at 2211 W. North Temple.

In December, Northrop broke ground on the facility expansion project designed to increase factory output and better serve its commercial, defense and national security customers, a company news release said.

The 225,000-square-foot plant will be expanded by 52,000 square feet to accommodate growth across multiple programs, Northrop communications director Gina Piellusch told the Deseret News. She said the site is primarily a production facility for defense and commercial navigation systems.

"We've had huge demand from both our military and commercial customers for our fiber-optic gyro navigation products," she said.

The Salt Lake City plant builds and tests navigation systems, gyroscopes and accelerometers for both military and commercial applications and also runs an automated circuit card assembly operation.

The plant houses approximately 750 employees. Northrop also has about 85 workers at its information systems operation in Clearfield. Worldwide, Northrop has 120,000 employees that service aerospace, military and commercial markets.

"We are pleased to be expanding our facilities in Salt Lake City to better accommodate our customers' needs," Paul Russell, vice president of engineering and manufacturing for Northrop Grumman's western region electronic systems sector, said in a statement.

Piellusch said the expansion is scheduled for completion in December.

In conjunction with the growth of the company's navigation business, since 2007, the employee population at the Salt Lake City location has increased by more than 20 percent, the release said. But, Piellusch said the company does not plan on more workers on any significant level as a result of the announced expansion.

e-mail: jlee@desnews.com