Cookeville’s REI broke ground on its new 36,000-square-foot facility expansion on Friday.
REI President Tom Jones said REI is expanding its facility to support growth in engineering, production, and training center operations. Jones said this day great for his team.
“We’ve been working on this for two or three years now, and the market finally came to the right place,” Jones said. “I guess the world stabilized enough that we felt confident to go ahead and do it. We are basically busting at the seams here at REI. We are growing, we need to hire more people, and we need this space to expand.”
Jones said the REI is the leading manufacturer in the world for its specific niche market and is growing out of necessity. Jones said the expansion will bring more high-paying jobs to Cookeville.
“Our biggest asset at REI is not so much the technology of the market, it truly is the people,” Jones said. “And I have to confess, this is a wonderful place to have a company because you’ve got hard-working, honest people and a good quality of life.”
Jones said last year was the largest year that REI has ever had in 40-plus years of operating. Jones said the expansion will help with the production and training of a new product that is set to release next year.
“We are building a spectral analyzer, that’s also known as an omnispectral correlator,” Jones said. “It goes from 10 kHz to 43 GHz and has a sweep speed of 1,100 GHz per second.”
A spectral analyzer is a counter-surveillance device designed to detect various types of eavesdropping threats.
The expansion marks the second expansion that REI has done since 2002. Jones said he expects the expansion to take about a year and a half to two years to complete.
