M&H Valve's $19 Million Anniston Investment and the Case for Modernizing Plant Infrastructure

M&H Valve, a division of McWane Inc., is investing $19 million in advanced manufacturing technology at its Anniston, Alabama foundry, the company announced in March 2026. The spending includes $7.6 million in automated production systems, a $6.9 million expansion covering CNC equipment, blast machinery, and additional production space, and $4.9 million in 2025 to replace foundry equipment. M&H Valve manufactures fire hydrants and water system components and maintains a workforce of more than 320 employees. Installation is underway, with completion scheduled through 2026.

For anyone responsible for an industrial facility in East Alabama, the part of that announcement worth sitting with is the reason behind it: M&H is replacing machinery that is more than 20 years old. That is not unique to one foundry. It is the position a lot of plants are in right now, and it applies to more than production equipment.

Alabama’s Industrial Base Is Reinvesting

Anniston sits a few miles from OSI’s home base in Oxford. When a manufacturer of this size commits capital on this scale in our own backyard, it signals where the regional industrial economy is heading. Alabama Secretary of Commerce Ellen McNair tied the investment to the strength of the local workforce, and Anniston Mayor Ciara Smith-Roston framed it as a measure of the value of doing business in the community.

That reinvestment is the pattern, not the exception. Plants across Northeast Alabama are modernizing aging lines to improve efficiency, precision, and throughput. The question for facility and operations leaders is whether the systems that protect and connect those lines are being modernized on the same schedule.

Aging Equipment Is Not Just a Production Problem

M&H is replacing machinery that has been running for two decades. Most camera and access control systems on the plant floor are in the same condition and rarely get the same attention. They were good enough when they were installed. They have not kept up.

The failure mode is predictable. An incident happens, someone pulls the footage, and the recording is too low-resolution to identify anyone, has gaps where a camera dropped offline, or was overwritten before anyone looked. A surveillance system that cannot produce usable footage after an incident is not protecting the operation. It is a liability that looks like protection.

The retrofit trap

Facilities that wait until after a major equipment upgrade to address security end up retrofitting around new machinery, new cabling runs, and new production layouts. Coordinating surveillance, access control, and network upgrades alongside the production modernization is cheaper and cleaner than tearing into a finished line later.

Automation Raises the Stakes on the Network

The automated production systems and CNC equipment in an investment like this one do not run in isolation. They generate data, connect to control systems, and depend on a network that has to stay up. The moment a plant adds automation, the network stops being a convenience and becomes part of the production line.

That has two consequences. First, the network has to be built for industrial conditions and load, not adapted from an office-grade install. Second, security cameras should never share a flat network with control systems and automated equipment. Camera traffic belongs on its own segmented path, separated from the operational network and behind a firewall, so that surveillance does the job it is there for without becoming a way into the systems that run the plant.

Designing that segmentation in from the start is straightforward. Untangling a flat network after everything is already connected is not.

What OSI Brings to Modernizing Facilities

Overwatch Systems Integrated is based in Oxford, Alabama, minutes from Anniston. Our team brings 20-plus years of experience in industrial maintenance, including fully automated and hazardous manufacturing environments, where a system has to perform through heat, vibration, and the realities of a working plant floor. That is the background OSI was built on.

We design and install industrial-grade video surveillance, segmented network infrastructure, and access control engineered for foundries, casting operations, and heavy manufacturing. We are not a national vendor dispatching a technician from another state. We are local, and when something needs attention, we are close.

If your facility is modernizing production this year, the right time to evaluate the security and network infrastructure is alongside that work, not after it. OSI offers a no-obligation facility assessment and proposal. Visit www.overwatchsi.com or call (256) 240-0681 to set one up.