Swiss energy giant ABB Group plans a $90 million cable manufacturing plant in Huntersville that will have about 100 employees.
The plant will be built at the intersection of N.C. Highway 115 and Verhoeff Drive. The site is in Commerce Station Business Park, jointly developed by Huntersville, Cornelius and Davidson.
State and local officials announced the project Thursday afternoon at Huntersville Town Hall. The project was made possible, in part, by state grants.
The Economic Incentive Committee of the N.C. Department of Commerce approved a Job Development Investment Grant that could be worth up to $2.15 million to ABB over nine years. The One North Carolina Fund is contributing $400,000.
Huntersville and Mecklenburg County also have approved incentive packages, including training to be made available at Central Piedmont Community College. The tax incentives for ABB will be a rebate of 75 percent of its town and county taxes for 10 years. The rebate will be given annually. The company must invest at least $84 million and employ 100 to qualify for the incentives.
ABB (NYSE:ABB) announced plans in May to build a plant in the United States. At the time, the Zurich-based company said it would manufacture high-voltage cable for the U.S. transmission grid.
But the company has been looking for a location since late summer of 2009. N.C. Deputy Commerce Secretary Dale Carroll says several states were in the hunt initially. For the last several months, the competition has been between upstate South Carolina and the Charlotte region.
Jeff Edge of the Charlotte Chamber says Huntersville beat out Greenville, S.C., for the plant.
The announcement also means 30 additional jobs in the Triangle area. ABB will beef up its engineering staff at its Power Services division on the N.C. State University Centennial Campus to support the work of the manufacturing plant here.
Construction of the Huntersville plant is slated to start soon, with the facility expected to open in 2012. Anders Sjolien, regional director for ABB Power Systems in Raleigh, says the exact size of the plant has not been decided yet, as design work continues. It will be built on 20 acres in the 314-acre business park
The average annual wage for the new jobs will be $64,008.
The commerce department, Lake Norman Regional Economic Development Commission and the Charlotte Chamber were among the key groups that recruited ABB. The N.C. Community College System and ElectriCities of North Carolina, the municipal power agency for Huntersville, also were involved.
ABB has looked for a U.S. site to tap into the market for high-voltage cable as the nation upgrades its transmission grid.
The company was formed in 1988 by the merger of the Swedish company ASEA and Switzerland-based Brown, Boveri & Cei. ABB already has significant ties to North Carolina. It moved its North American headquarters to the Raleigh suburb of Cary last year from Connecticut. It has about 500 employees in the Triangle and almost 1,000 statewide.
ABB also is expanding its manufacturing plant in Pinetops, N.C., which makes medium-voltage transformers.
The Huntersville plant is the latest win in the Charlotte region’s effort to recruit major players in the energy industry. That campaign, which markets this area as “The New Energy Capital.” Its biggest coup to date involves a plan by Siemens Energy to invest $170 million in a turbine-manufacturing hub that will bring 825 jobs here during the next five years.
Carroll says the growing energy industry in the Charlotte area was a factor in the decision to locate the plant here. But he says it was just one factor of many.
ABB reported almost $31 billion in sales last year and has 117,000 employees worldwide.
Its North American operation, ABB Inc., employs 15,000 across the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.
Source: Charlotte Business Journal
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