By FOX23.com News Staff
CLAREMORE, Okla. — Pryer Aerospace in Claremore broke ground on its 60,000-square-foot facility expansion on Tuesday.
“This is the only facility of its kind in the Tulsa or Claremore region and there’s probably only just two or three other facilities even similar with similar types of equipment in the whole state of Oklahoma,” explained Brian Gleason, the Vice President and General Manager of Pryer Aerospace. “…Pryer Aerospace specializes in complex aerostructural assemblies, including the fabrication of components and high speed, high precision machining.”
Gleason said Pryer Aerospace’s unique position in the industry led to a need for expansion as demand for its particular services continues to increase.
“Space flight programs that are run by customers of ours such as Blue Origin or SpaceX, including satellite companies, are growing exponentially. There’s a lot of defense and technological reasons that we would do that. Also, the defense systems with Boeing Phantom Works or other customers that we would have in the aircraft world are growing because of the geopolitical events going [on] around the globe.”
Steve Mitchell, the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Argonaut Private Equity, which acquired Pryer Aerospace in 2025, said the expansion is part of a renaissance in manufacturing that’s occurring throughout middle America.
“Claremore and Rogers County makes it very easy to invest capital and to grow,” said Mitchell. “I hope all of northeastern Oklahoma can take a cue from what they’re doing here. They didn’t give us red tape. They didn’t make it officially hard. They didn’t tell us that’s going to be a problem. They said 60,000 square feet, $40 million in equipment adding to our tax base, taking advantage of the great labor force they have here, chief real estate, ample water, low cost of electricity, those are our assets. Other states don’t have those and we do. We need to leverage that in every part of our community in northeastern Oklahoma.”
The new expansion is set to help Pryer Aerospace remain technologically competitive in the industry and in the local region.
Gleason said, “Working with those types of companies gives us the opportunity to live on the bleeding edge of technology of what is possible, what is possible for humans with combination and AI. I think for Claremore it represents a further investment in the aerospace sector of the economy that’s going to grow and grow and grow and Oklahoma gets to be a big part of that.”
