Athens manufacturing company Turner Medical Precision Machining Inc. is eyeing adding onto its facility and adding more jobs in the near future.

Charles Tucker, vice president of operations, said the company is looking to add 50,000 square feet onto its current 75,000-square-foot facility on Durham Drive. Additionally, it may also add as many as 25 new workers within the next year to year and a half.

Turner Medical Inc. manufactures medical instruments and orthopedic implants for Johnson & Johnson and Zimmer Medical.

“It’s not our product; it belongs to the big medical companies,” Tucker said. “We’re really just a subcontractor, I guess you could say.”

The company, founded by Bill Turner, began as Turner Machine Inc. in the early 1970s.

The company currently has about 110 employees, about 50 percent of which are from the Athens-Limestone area. Tucker, who began working for the company in 1981, said the ideal worker would have manufacturing experience, but there are exceptions.

“We do hire some from the trade schools like Calhoun, Shelton and Wallace State,” he said. “We have a few young people who go to school and work at the same time.”

He said Turner Medical is a great place to work because jobs are stable and there’s no competition for the company in the local market.

“There’s not a lot of places that have the capability to do what we do,” he said.

The last couple of years for the company have been very successful, Tucker said. The company was named Alabama Small Manufacturer of the Year in 2010, and recently saw its sales figures double. He anticipates a 25 percent growth in 2011.

“We just want to improve our quality and do more for our customers,” he said.

For more information, visit turnermachine.com.