On Thursday, Vermeer Corporation hit another milestone in recovery from the 2018 tornado.

They announced the shipment of the first product fully assembled in the new area of the recently opened Plant 7 facility: a D24x40 S3 Navigator horizontal directional drill destined for many dealerships is the first off the line.

“I couldn’t be more proud of our teams as they’ve continued to adjust throughout the rebuilding process,” said President and CEO Jason Andringa. “These teams were directly impacted by the tornado and have worked with agility through those constraints over the past two years as we’ve made significant steps to come back stronger than ever. Now, it’s exciting to see them doing important work in their new space and producing tough yellow iron. We have the strongest team in the world.”

To commemorate this milestone, the team – along with President, Industrial Solutions Doug Hundt – gave the D24x40 S3 HDD a strong send-off after signing their names on the machine.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions, Vermeer cannot offer tours to the public at this time. However, they will be posting on their social media channels to share more peeks inside the state-of-the-art facility.