The following is written by Sumner Mayor Dave Enslow:
Who knew that Sumner would ever be featured in ASIATravelTips.com and Aerospace Manufacturing and Design? The news that GKN Aerospace is moving their production of winglets to Sumner is actually big stuff. These will be shipped to Boeing for the 737 MAX. GKN is going into 57,000 sq. ft. of an existing Sumner warehouse, and once they’re fully underway, they’ll employ 75 people.
It’s really nice to see high quality jobs coming here from South Carolina for a change. GKN is a first tier supplier to the global aviation industry. They are a British company that has been in business for over 250 years. They started in 1759 as Dowlais ironworks, transitioned to steel and railroad in the 1800s and to automotive after World War I before becoming a leader in aerospace in the later portion of the 1900s. And now, this long history will have a Sumner chapter.
GKN joins others such as Composite Solutions and AIM Aerospace in supporting Boeing and the aerospace industry from Sumner. We’re not just about rhubarb around here. And, the jobs here support even more jobs around the region and the nation. These winglets will employ 75 people in Sumner, but their work generates thousands of more jobs to build the 738 MAX.
Altogether, Sumner has over 10,000 jobs within the City limits. That’s amazing! Now, consider the jobs that those jobs support. In Sumner, Golden State bakes McDonald’s hamburger buns for the entire state of Washington. That means that every teenager flipping burgers at their first job, from Bellingham to Spokane, relies on Sumner. Costco’s Sumner distribution center moves product into Costco stores throughout the region, and we know they employ many, many more people in each retail store, so the lady checking your receipt in Puyallup relies on Sumner. By the time you add it up, what happens in Sumner affects tens of thousands of jobs across the region, which means tens of thousands of families buying homes, having health care, raising kids….
In starts with a bun, or a winglet, but it ends with a healthy economy for Sumner, the state, and the nation.
