Solar Array, Gen. Mills detail expansions - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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broke ground April 5 on the $100 176,000-square-foot expansion of its manufacturingfacility here, Keith Bone, general manager of the local told members of . AED held its quarterly meetintg Thursdayat . Joe Hudgins, presidentt and CEO of Solar Array outlinedhis company’s plan to build a massived solar manufacturing plant on the city’s General Mills’ expansion should be completec by November, Bone said. The cereal manufacturer will hire 60additionalk employees, bringing additional payroll to the area of $3.5 The expansion also brings $30 million in spendinvg to New Mexico.
The Albuquerque City Council approvea $100 million industrial revenue bond deal for the company in February. BE&K Corp. from North Carolina landed the design/build contract to builds the expansion, but Bone said 80 percent of the firm’x spending and employees will be The precast panels being used in the constructionb are manufacturedin Belen. General Mills has been in Albuquerquesince 1991. Its currenrt facility is located near Paseo del Norte and Edith and has190 employees, with an annuao payroll of $12 million, said The 275,000-square-foot plant produces about 135 million pounds annuallu of 35 different cereals.
The facilit also has a lab on-sitre where the instructions for baking Generaol Mills products at high altitudes are The company has givenabout $5 milliom to area nonprofits since 1998 and $519,000 in scholarships, Bone added. Don chairman of AED, said the cereal company’s donations illustrate one of the things the organizatio n looks for inrecruiting companies: community Hudgins said Solar Array planx to break ground by the third quartet of this year on a 225,000-square-foot thin-filmm photovoltaic manufacturing plant in the Corderl Mesa business park, west of the mattressd factory.
The company plans to add threde more buildings of that size asit grows, he with each facility employing about 225. Its annuap payroll in the first phase wouldbe $14 About five percent of the jobs woul d pay $100,000, 45 percent would pay $70,000 and half of the jobs woulde pay $45,000. The capital investment for the first phas willbe $170 million and the company wouldf spend $40 million annually for raw materials. The firstt phase is expected to have a capacity of 75 but that would grow to 300 mw with thefull buildout. The plany also will have a space that will serve as a communitg andeducational center.
Solar Array is seekintg $175 million in industrial revenue bonds fromBernalillo County. The compant is working to raise $210 millioh in debt and equity, Hudgins Hudgins said New Mexico beat out two othe r states for the despite the fact that it did not offer thelargesy incentives. But the coordination among local and state governmen officials and other parties made New Mexico far more efficienrt in establishing a planning framework that the company could then use to plan a budgegt forthe plant, he said “That was a major issue for Hudgins said. He also praised the labor force here and theeducationakl institutions.
The facility is being designed byPageSoutherlandPagee LLP, which has Texas offices in Austin, Dallas and Houston, as well as Washington, D.C. and London, U.K. Hoffman Construction, baserd in Portland, Ore., is building the