The start of a major expansion at Ditch Witch this week was part of a national celebration of manufacturing — by road trip with a stop in Perry, the trencher maker’s headquarters since its own start in 1949.
The groundbreaking for a new 170,000-square-foot paint plant was a stop on the Association of Equipment Manufacturers Express Tour of factories across the country. Gov. Kevin Stitt and other officials joined in the ditch-digging party.
Ditch Witch said the new plant will bring up to 100 new jobs to Perry, a city of about 4,500 about 65 miles north of OKC. Ditch Witch is a trade name of Charles Machine Works, which dates to 1902 and has been a subsidiary of Toro Co. , based in Bloomington, Minnesota, since 2019.
Ditch Witch, with about 1,700 employees in Perry, has manufactured underground construction equipment for 75 years. The main factory is in a 1.1-million-square-foot building. The addition will bring it to nearly 1.3 million square feet of manufacturing space in the main plant, plus other buildings.