Buoyed by water, Crown Solutions embraces growth building

Crown Solutions

Founded: 1984.

Based: 945 S. Brown School Road, Vandalia.

Products: Water purification systems for power-generating and mining companies.

Employees: About 180. Is expected to add about 140 in the next four years, depending on the economy.

Expansion: Into a new, 70,000-square foot building on 913 Industrial Park Drive.

Ownership: Veolia Water Solutions acquired the company in November 2006.

VANDALIA — When he started Crown Solutions in the 1980s, Lundy Neely didn’t necessarily foresee his company becoming what it is today — a growing key segment of a large multinational corporation that’s helping promote the Dayton region’s safe, plentiful water supply.

Water systems manufacturer Crown Solutions, part of Paris-based Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies, is all that and more.

“It feels good,” said Neely, president and chief executive of Crown, which was a sponsor of the first Dayton Water Conference this spring. “It’s a challenge, certainly, expanding as we have in the last four years.”

That expansion is ongoing. The finishing touches are being placed on a new, 70,000-square-foot building on Industrial Park Drive, not far from the company’s current headquarters on Brown School Road and highly visible to about 90,000 motorists daily on Interstate 75. Neely said Crown has a 15-year lease to occupy the building.

With truck docking bays and a 33-foot-high ceiling, the new building offers much more space for manufacturing and storage than the current building with its 14-foot-high ceiling.

The new building will be completed by November, and the company will move in by December or January, Neely said. Initially, 70 to 80 employees will work there.

Last year, company officials said the firm would add 140 employees in five years.

Crown has a diverse customer base that includes commercial companies, power-generating and mining concerns, many of whom must ensure that the water coming out of their operations is purer than water coming in, said Jim Marten, Crown vice president.

While everyone needs water, Marten said, it “is certainly life and death to certain industrial applications these days.”

Operations mining for copper, gold, silver, nickel and more depend on the economy, but they are also driven by China and India, which have been growing faster than the developed world. In turn, their business drives Crown’s.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2390 or tgnau@DaytonDailyNews.com.