MOBILE, Alabama – Trade & Industry Development has named the $600 million Airbus final assembly plant at Mobile’s Brookley Aeroplex among its top 15 corporate advancement award winners for 2013.
The site selection magazine selected the Airbus project as one of only 30 Corporate Investment and Community Impact winners nationwide for the transformational effect it’s expected to have on the city of Mobile. Several hundred projects announced during 2012 were considered.
“While many in the U.S. were preparing for their upcoming Fourth of July celebrations, the city of Mobile, Ala., was celebrating an historic economic development announcement. Their celebration centered on the July 2, 2012 announcement by the French aircraft manufacturer Airbus that it would be making a capital investment of $600 million to locate its first U.S. manufacturing facility in this Alabama port city,” the magazine stated.
Collectively, the 8th annual Cici Awards honored are expected to create and retain more than 35,250 jobs and represent total corporate investments of more than $16 billion.
With an April 8 groundbreaking on tap, the final assembly line in Mobile will be dedicated to production of Airbus’ fuel-efficient, single-aisle A320 family aircraft. The facility, expected to employ 1,000 people directly when the plant makes its first deliveries in 2016, could produce as many as 50 planes per year by 2018, and is already being heralded by company officials as the future “epicenter of commercial activity” for Airbus’ North American operations.
In addition, the construction phase is expected to create more than 3,000 construction-related jobs over a three-year period, and the Alabama Department of Commerce estimates aerospace suppliers locating in the state could generate another 3,700 jobs. The project’s total estimated statewide economic impact hovers around $409 million.
Prospective suppliers should register directly with Hoar Program Management and wait to be contacted once skill sets and needs have been matched.
Scott D. Swoger – Trade & Industry Development’s publisher and president of its parent company, Birmingham-based Due North Consulting Inc. – said seven of the 30 honorees announced plans in 2012 to individually invest $1 billion or more.
“These major investments provide a clear snapshot of where and in which industries growth is occurring today,” Swoger said in a prepared statement.
by Kelli Dugan