Amfabsteel, Inc. and its sister company Phat Steel, Inc., which are owned and run by company president Mark Mosher, have announced an employment expansion that will create 63 new jobs in Sandoval County.

Amfabsteel was established and has been in the Bernalillo area since 1984, according to Mosher. Phat Steel was established in 2006 to aid Amfabsteel with smaller projects, he said, and since both entities have been up and running, business has multiplied.

“We build more Native American casinos than anybody in the country, just to give you a scope of our work,” Mosher said. “But the majority of our work is 80 to 90 percent outside of the state of New Mexico.”

Everything Amfabsteel creates is made in-house at the companies’ lone Bernalillo location, he said, and then the products are shipped abroad and assembled there.

According to Mosher, Amfabsteel is a structural steel fabricator, which includes columns and beams; Phat Steel builds the components that go into bigger projects, such as staircases and handrails.

“Currently, we are looking to increase our production here,” Mosher said. “Mostly because this is our home base, this is where we are and this is where I live.”

Mosher said Amfabsteel has a need to create a night shift and add a few workers to its day shift, which will create 43 new positions to keep up with the companies’ ever-growing demand for production. Phat Steel is also looking to add 20 jobs to help maintain the flow of smaller projects that may result from expansion in order to keep the work flow level.

“Every individual that we hire has to be trained, even if they’ve worked at another steel fabrication shop,” Mosher said. “We do things so much different than the usual steel sub-contractor.”

As part of the expansion, he said, Amfabsteel and Phat Steel will participate in the Job Training Incentive Program, which funds classroom and on-the-job training for newly created jobs in expanding or relocating businesses for up to six months. In addition, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act program will help Amfabsteel and Phat Steel with workforce development.

“Other than those two programs we are funding this expansion on our own,” Mosher said. “We are going to need a second shift in order to meet our demand, plain and simple.”

Mosher wants to make clear that these two companies are not expanding in acreage or buildings; instead the expansion is a need for more manpower, he said.

“It’s just the matter of being able to work a night shift in the same facility,” Mosher said. “We should be able to fully achieve this mission in the next quarter.”

Ron Baca, steel fabricator for Amfabsteel, said he takes pride in the fact that he has been working with the company for 11 years.
“If you want to come here, you better do quality work,” Baca said. “We do things right the first time and that’s why we’ve expanded — because people keep coming back to us.”

Baca said he was an experienced machinist in Santa Fe before the facility he worked at closed.