Piqua buyer purchases Dayton Machine Tool site for $1.5 million

A Piqua steel business plans to open its first Dayton location next year after the purchase of a longtime Dayton Machine Tool site.

Scott Steel LLC recently purchased Dayton Machine Tool property on Webster Street to open a steel coil servicing business, said Aaron Scott, vice president and co-owner of Scott Steel LLC in Piqua.

"We are what's considered a low-carbon, flat-rolled steel service center," Scott told the Dayton Daily News Friday. "We process master coils — currently, we process master coils all over the Midwest, in Michigan and Indiana. We’re just trying to incorporate that into our business and take that in-house."

Iron Man Holdings LLC paid $1.495 million for the offices and industrial property at 1314 Webster, Montgomery County real estate records show.

The seller was the trust of Robert J. Davis, who owned Dayton Machine Tool (DMT) for many years. The building has more than 5,000 square feet of office space and more than 35,000 square feet of manufacturing space, according to county records.

Scott Steel intends to put a master coil slitting line at the Webster Street facility, a line capable of processing a variety of materials and thicknesses. The company had been outsourcing that work to the tune of about 2,000 tons a month, Scott said.

That's how much steel the new Dayton location will be processing from the start.

"We’re trying to employ people in Ohio," Scott said. "It makes sense for us business-wise to start handling that ourselves."

He hopes to achieve full operations in Dayton by July 1 and hopes to start hiring early next year. He expects to have eight to ten employees immediately, growing to about 25 in the next few years.

Scott Steel is family-owned. Aaron Scott is the son of John Scott, the company's owner and founder.

DMT still listed 1314 Webster as its place of business on its web site Friday. But Scott believes that business will be shifted to affiliate First Tool. A message was left for Gary Lackey, DMT general manager.

The Webster Street site offers plenty of room. In 2009, the company was rebuilding a horizontal disk broach in one of the bays there. That machine's back-end weighed 125,000 pounds, with a front end weighing 55,000 pounds, extending about 70 feet in length, standing more than 8 feet high.

"It's one of the largest machine tools being built in the United States," Richard Alden, then-DMT's chief operating officer, told this newspaper in December 2009.

DMT was founded in 1949. Affiliated holdings include First Tool Corp., Estee Mold & Die, Dayton Manufacturing and other companies.

About the Author

Thomas Gnau is a business reporter who joined the Dayton Daily News in 2007. He has reported for daily newspapers in Ohio since 1991.