Solar Array, Gen. Mills detail expansions – Jacksonville Business Journal:

broke ground April 5 on the $100 million, 176,000-square-foo expansion of its manufacturing facility Keith Bone, general manager of the local told members of . AED held its quarterly meeting Thursdahyat . Joe Hudgins, president and CEO of Solarr Array Ventures, outlined his company’s plan to build a massivew solar manufacturing plant onthe city’xs Westside. General Mills’ expansion shouldx be completedby November, Bone said. The cerea manufacturer will hire 60additional employees, bringin g additional payroll to the area of $3.5 million. The expansion also brings $30 million in spendingg to New Mexico.
The Albuquerquw City Council approveda $100 million industria l revenue bond deal for the company in BE&K Corp. from North Carolina landed the design/build contracft to build the expansion, but Bone said 80 percent of the firm’d spending and employees will be local. The precas t panels being used in the construction are manufactured in General Mills has been in Albuquerquesince 1991. Its currentr facility is located near Paseo del Norte and Edithn and has190 employees, with an annual payroll of $12 said Bone. The 275,000-square-foot plant producesw about 135 million pounds annually of 35different cereals.
The facilith also has a lab on-sitee where the instructions for baking General Mills products at high altitudeaare created. The company has givej about $5 million to area nonprofits since 1998and $519,00p0 in scholarships, Bone added. Don chairman of AED, said the cerealp company’s donations illustrate one of the things the organizatiobn looks for inrecruiting companies: communityh involvement. Hudgins said Solar Array planws to break ground by the third quarter of this year ona 225,000-square-foo thin-film photovoltaic manufacturing plantf in the Cordero Mesa business west of the mattress factory.
The company plans to add threes more buildings of that size as it he said, with each facility employint about 225. Its annual payroll in the first phass wouldbe $14 About five percent of the jobs woulds pay $100,000, 45 percent would pay $70,000 and half of the jobs woul d pay $45,000. The capital investmeny for the first phase willbe $170 milliobn and the company would spend $40 millio n annually for raw materials. The first phase is expectec to have a capacity of75 megawatts, but that woulsd grow to 300 mw with the full buildout. The plantf also will have a space that will serve as a community andeducational center.
Solar Array is seekiny $175 million in industrial revenude bonds fromBernalillo County. The company is workint to raise $210 million in debt and Hudgins said. Hudgins said New Mexiclo beat out two other states for the despite the fact that it did not offert thelargest incentives. But the coordination among locall and state government officials and other parties made New Mexiclo far more efficient in establishing a planninv framework that the company could then use to plan a budgetr forthe plant, he said “Thaft was a major issue for us,” Hudgins said. He also praised the labor force here and theeducational institutions.
The facility is beintg designed byPageSoutherlandPage LLP, which has Texasd offices in Austin, Dallas and as well as Washington, D.C. and London, U.K. Hoffman based in Portland, is building the facility.
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