A 300,000 square-foot General Electric manufacturing plant has celebrated its grand opening in Auburn.
Gov. Robert Bentley and other state and local officials were on hand Monday to celebrate the facility’s grant opening. The plant is slated to produce parts for GE jet engines that will power commercial and military aircraft.
The plant is expected to employ 50 people by the end of the year and will eventually employ about 400 people.
“We not only have a great workforce, they also have the right attitude,” Bentley told the Opelika-Auburn News. He praised workforce training programs that work with the state’s two-year college and university systems. “You can teach someone skills but you can’t teach them the right attitude so if you hire people with the right attitude. it’s going to help the company succeed.”
The grand opening is testament to how far the state has come in attracting quality jobs, said Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard.
“It wasn’t that long ago that Alabama didn’t produce any automobiles, now we’re second in the country,” Hubbard said. “I believe aviation is the next area where Alabama is going to grow and prosper.”
General Electric Aviation Auburn site leader Joe Markiewicz said the company is discussing the possibility of expanding on the 11-acre site the plant is built on.
“We have 30,000 engines in service right now and that will grow to 46,000 by 2020,” Markiewicz said. “As the industry continues to grow, we look to each one of our facilities to grow with the industry and this environment looks very prosperous over the next decade.”
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense