June 15, 2021

A Hudson-based company is making a move northwest as the anchor tenant for a new industrial park near Canton.

Eparts, an e-commerce business selling aftermarket spare parts primarily for farm equipment, will build a 100,000-square-foot distribution center on the north side of Highway 18 near Interstate 29. It’s the first business to come to the new planned I-29 Ag and Industrial Park.

“We looked up and down the corridor for a location that was big enough to grow into,” said Brandon Van Beek, president of Eparts.

Van Beek started the business in 2017. Since then, it has outgrown its initial 10,000-square-foot facility as well as the 20,000-square-foot addition added a couple of years later.

Demand for the aftermarket spare parts has been so strong that Eparts also has been renting three additional buildings in Hudson to stock enough inventory.

The move will give the business more space, but it also brings easier access to the interstate for trucks moving inventory. Being closer to Sioux Falls also will afford it a later pickup time for the U.S. Postal Service and UPS, which Eparts relies on to ship products.

In addition to more space, the new facility will bring more jobs to Lincoln County.

“We envision that there’ll be 25 to 30 employees there in a very short period of time,” said Don Nelson, CFO for Progressive Ag Holdings and Eparts.

Nelson also anticipates the rest of the 155-acre industrial park will fill in the next five years. He envisions other park tenants also will be agriculture-related businesses.

“We’re excited to see a rural business stay rural,” said Jesse Fonkert, executive director of the Sioux Metro Growth Alliance. “And thanks to the growth happening in Canton and Worthing, and the investment the state is making in Highway 18, we really see this area growing to attract more businesses to Lincoln County.”

Van Beek said his goal was to keep Eparts rural, and the new site does that while giving it needed space.

One of Eparts’ biggest sellers is aftermarket seats that fit different compact utility tractors. Van Beek said Eparts is one of the first to serve that niche in the market.

“That’s what kind of has really blown up our inventory space,” he said. “We stock a lot of those seats, and they’re really bulky.”

The timeline for construction is uncertain at this point, both because of rising material costs and the challenges in hiring people to build the building, but the first step in the process is getting the property rezoned by the county. The land needs to be reclassified from agricultural to planned development, Nelson said, and the Lincoln County Commission will weigh that decision June 22.

So far, conversations with officials with the county and and the towns of Worthing and Canton have been positive, Van Beek said.

“We’re really excited about becoming a part of that area and those communities,” he said.