The ISU Research Park celebrated the opening of a new satellite office of Vermeer Corp. last week. Vermeer believes this will bring about more cooperation with the university and will allow Vermeer to work closer with prospective graduates from the College of Engineering.

“We collaborate with several different institutions.” said Teri Voss, representative for the company. “Recruiting is an ongoing priority for us — recruiting the right talent, getting the right skill sets to meet our needs. And engineering is one of the areas where we have some real needs.”

Vermeer Manufacturing Co. was started in 1948 by Gary Vermeer when he revolutionized the farming industry by creating a mechanical hoist to ease the process of unloading his grain at harvest. Since then, they have expanded from farming to include a variety of areas from construction to developing renewable energy through Biomass.

According to Vermeer’s official Web page:

“At Vermeer, we’re not following the road less traveled — we’re carving that road out of the future’s unbroken landscape. We’re always searching for ‘a better way’ to accomplish the tasks that are reshaping the earth. We’ve developed innovative solutions for construction, forage, landscaping, mining, organic recycling, rental, tree care, wood waste, other industries. And there’s always something new coming from our talented research and development team.”

The ISU Research Park works closely with the university but is an independent entity which helps it’s tenants reach their goals. It caters to both large corporations, such as Vermeer, and small Iowa businesses that are just getting their start. The Research Park offers many services to university and area connections, including: facilities, expertise, technology, finance, recruiting and more.

“The addition of Vermeer follows on the heels of what is turning out to be a stellar year for the Research Park community.” said Steven Carter in a 2011 press release from the Research Park. “Everything from Webfilings exponential growth, to Hipra’s decision to make us home to their North American headquarters, is validation that the Research Park can truly provide for the sustainability and growth of its global tenant base through connection with the resources of Iowa State University, the community of Ames and the state of Iowa.”

Vermeer has leased 1,800 square feet of office space at the park, which will house about a dozen full-time employees from Vermeer. The decision to purchase this space was brought up after the company saw the many oppourtunities this new space would offer, including: recruitment of ISU students and access to a talented pool of interns, research space to accommodate additional projects and engineers, improved cooperation on grants and research funding and a new supplementary location for employees based in the Des Moines/Ames metro.

“Our new office addition at the Iowa State University Research Park is a perfect intersection where we will not only engage our future workforce but also have an onsite engineering team that will work on specialized projects and research,” said Mary Andringa, CEO of Vermeer in a 2011 news release. “At Vermeer, we are constantly adapting our business to meet the ever changing needs of our global base of customers and employees. The ISU Research Park will provide us the means to pursue several strategic business goals in a unique location.”

Vermeer hopes to work closely with the ISU College of Engineering on improving existing products as well as developing new products:

“We’re looking at groundbreaking development of advanced technologies,” Vos said. “We’re looking to improve safety on current products and future products, but also to apply advance materials to improve production, product longevity, versatility.”