July 17, 2026 · LaGrange · Boone
Postle Aluminum Expands in LaGrange County While a $6.3B PJM Cost Hit Raises Indiana Manufacturing Electricity Costs
Postle Aluminum expands in LaGrange County as a $6.3B PJM data-center cost pushes Indiana manufacturing electricity costs higher heading into 2028 and beyond.
Postle Aluminum will add 230,000 square feet of extrusion capacity in Howe, LaGrange County, while a separate PJM capacity auction just placed $6.3 billion in data-center-driven costs onto every plant in the grid's footprint, two developments that pull Indiana C&I in opposite directions on the same planning horizon. One is an Indiana employer investing ahead of demand; the other is a grid-wide increase in Indiana manufacturing electricity costs that operators here did not create. Both land before 2028, and both belong on your radar now.
Postle Aluminum Adds Hard-Alloy Capacity in Howe
Postle Aluminum, the Elkhart-based extrusion subsidiary of Thor Industries, announced July 15 that it will install a 10-inch press and a 7-inch press inside a new 230,000-square-foot facility in Howe. Equipment deliveries start this summer, initial production targets early fall, and full rate is expected by year-end. The detail the announcement skips over: the 10-inch press adds 6061 hard-alloy capability. Postle has historically run soft alloy, 6063-series architectural profiles and trim, so 6061 pushes it into structural adjacencies like marine, defense, utility trailers, and EV structural components that soft-alloy-only shops in Northern Indiana can't serve.
Why it matters: this move is pre-emptive. Thor cut its FY2026 EPS outlook to $3.30-$3.80 and projects a mid-teens percentage decline in North American RV retail demand, yet Postle is adding two presses and a greenfield building into that headwind. If you source extrusions from a soft-alloy-only supplier, this is the moment to qualify whether that relationship now has a capability gap Postle is positioned to fill.
Indiana Launches a Nuclear Siting Program With a Design Gap
On July 15, Governor Braun launched the Indiana Advanced Nuclear Ready Community program at Union Station in Indianapolis. It creates a three-tier county designation framework, administered by the Office of Energy Development, that pre-qualifies counties as candidate sites for small modular reactors and other advanced nuclear facilities. The gap: the readiness toolkit treats reactor technologies as interchangeable at the county level, but the three developers circling Indiana, I&M/AEP with GE Vernova Hitachi's BWRX-300 at Rockport, First American Nuclear with its EAGL-1 fast-spectrum reactor, and Rolls-Royce with a 470-megawatt pressurized water reactor, have very different siting footprints, coolant needs, and NRC licensing pathways.
Why it matters: if your operation sits in a county pursuing this designation, start modeling now what concentrated industrial load growth does to your local utility rate structure over the next decade, and press OED on which technology assumptions the tier criteria actually rest on.
PJM's $6.3B Data Center Cost Raises Indiana Manufacturing Electricity Costs
PJM's 2028/29 capacity auction cleared 138,317 megawatts at the capped price of $325 per megawatt-day, $16.4 billion in total capacity payments for the 12 months starting June 1, 2028. PJM's independent market monitor attributed $6.3 billion of that to planned data centers inside the footprint, a cost spread across all customers rather than paid by the data centers themselves. For industrial customers on RTO pass-through contracts, capacity payments can represent a meaningful low-double-digit share of wholesale power costs, though the exact figure varies by contract structure, load profile, and your LSE.
Why it matters: retail prices in PJM are already up roughly 49 percent over five years, against a national average near 33 percent. A FERC Section 206 show-cause order requires PJM and its transmission owners to respond by August 17 on whether the current tariff unjustly pushes large-load transmission costs onto other customers. Pull your current contract and stress-test your 2028 energy budget against a scenario where the FERC cap is lifted and clearing prices rise materially.
Labor Competition Tightens in LaGrange and Boone Counties
Eli Lilly's Lebanon site in Boone County added $4.5 billion in new investment, now $21 billion total since 2020, backed by a $1.7 billion IEDC package, and its construction phase peaks with several thousand trades workers on site at once. Stack Postle's LaGrange County buildout on top, and skilled-trades competition tightens across northern and central Indiana. Federally, Workforce Pell is live at Ivy Tech today, and the START Act, co-sponsored by Indiana Senator Jim Banks, is advancing.
Why it matters: if you hire from the same labor pool, benchmark your skilled-trades wage offer before those buildouts post their first job reqs, and map your open roles against DOL registered apprenticeship eligibility now rather than competing for workers the open market is not producing.
Questions for Your Morning Huddle
Q: Does the Postle expansion change who we can source aluminum extrusions from?
A: Yes, Postle's new Howe facility adds 6061 hard-alloy capability, so if your current extrusion supplier only runs soft alloys, you now have a Northern Indiana option for structural profiles. Qualify whether your existing supplier has a capability gap before your next sourcing cycle.
Q: How does the PJM capacity auction affect our Indiana manufacturing electricity costs?
A: The $325 per megawatt-day clearing price drives $16.4 billion in capacity payments starting June 2028, and if you are on an RTO pass-through contract those costs reach you as a low-double-digit share of wholesale power. Model that increase against your all-in cost per kilowatt-hour now, before it locks into your 2028 contract structure.
Q: Should we worry about skilled-trades labor competition from the Lilly and Postle buildouts?
A: If you hire in Boone or LaGrange County, yes, Lilly's Lebanon construction peaks with several thousand trades workers on site and Postle is staffing a new facility, both pulling from the same pool. Benchmark your wage offer and map open roles against registered apprenticeship eligibility before postings go live.
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