Fort Morgan construction company buys vacant Windsor warehouse

WINDSOR — The ownership of a larger Fort Morgan construction company has purchased the former Hexcel building in the Great Western Industrial Park for $10.2 million. But the new owners say the building will remain vacant for the next year before they put it back on the market.

Schmeeckle Bros. Construction Co., which designs and builds beef-processing facilities, bought the former Hexcel building at 31815 Great Western Drive in late August.  

Hexcel Corp. (NYSE: HXL), which was a supplier to nearby Vestas Wind Systems, had owned that building for years, but shut down in Windsor in 2020. The company sold the property  to Microvast Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: MVST) in 2023. But not even a year into the new venture, leadership of Microvast pulled out.

According to its second-quarter earnings report filed last month, Microvast was facing serious net losses, and company leadership opted to consolidate its U.S. operations in Clarksville, Tennessee.

According to a second-quarter earnings press release, Microvast in the third quarter of this year would begin shifting its U.S. operations to Tennessee. The company, according to the release, shifted its long-term U.S. ESS market focus to producing Lithium Iron Phosphate battery systems instead of Nickel Manganese Cobalt battery solutions to its Clarksville, Tennessee facility. Microvast’s ME-4300 ESS is a 20-foot battery container. With its capability to discharge for two and four hours, it is designed for energy-shifting applications such as renewables integration, peak demand and capacity support.

The company also planned on “Exploring strategic alternatives to enhance liquidity including the sale of certain U.S. non-core real estate assets,” the earnings release stated.

Robin Schmeeckle, of Schmeeckle Bros., confirmed in an email that Schmeeckle purchased the 99,536-square-foot warehouse, but she said the company had no immediate plans to use the building. The actual sale is registered to Bar S U, Inc., which is owned by Wayne Schmeeckle, and shares the same address as the construction company.

“Our only plan is to hold onto it for one year and do some remodeling inside and clean up the exterior building and landscaping and put it back on the market.  It will remain vacant,” she said.