In 11 months from mid-February 2022 to the first week of 2023, four companies have revealed plans to build manufacturing plants in Bulloch County. Together, if all fulfill their promises to the county and state, they will eventually create more than 1,400 jobs.

That cumulative number was one that Benjy Thompson, chief executive officer of the Development Authority of Bulloch County, emphasized to the authority’s board at the conclusion of its 8 a.m. Thursday, Jan. 5, meeting. After a closed-door discussion near the end of the meeting, the DABC board had returned to open session and approved a memorandum of understanding for Ecoplastic America Corporation to build a $205 million plant, promised to create 456 jobs, with both the investment and the job creation phased in over eight years, on a DABC-owned site south of Statesboro.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp made the official announcement from Atlanta while the DABC met in Statesboro, and the Governor’s Office’s release about Ecoplastic appeared on a screen overhead before the board had even voted. But Bulloch’s cumulative score in jobs and investment was a local calculation.

“I want to remind everybody that since February 17 of last year we have announced projects that include 1,407 jobs and $897 million in capital investments,” Thompson said. “It’s been a good year.”

The Ecoplastic Corporation plant will make injection-molded plastic exterior and interior parts for Hyundai Motor Group’s electric vehicles.

2 Hyundai; 2 not

So, two of Bulloch County’s four new industries announced in the past 11 months will be direct suppliers to Hyundai Motor Group’s EV and battery “meta plant,” being built at the “mega site” in Bryan County about five miles from Bulloch’s southeastern boundary. The other two industries are not directly connected to the Hyundai plant but will make materials that can be used in battery or vehicle production.

Bulloch is also as one of four counties that teamed up to land the Hyundai plant itself, projected to employ 8,100 people to make Hyundai, Kia and Genesis branded vehicles. Bryan, Bulloch, Effingham and Chatham counties together participate in the Savannah Harbor-Interstate 16 Corridor Joint Development Authority, or JDA for short, which in partnership with the state closed on the purchase of the 2,284-acre site in July 2021.

Five years before that, regional officials had made preliminary deals for the tracts that eventually became the mega site, originally in an effort to attract a Volvo vehicle factory that instead went to Charleston, South Carolina.

“As we’ve said since 2015, Bulloch County is, for the mega site, in a very good location for suppliers, having been just far enough away but just close enough,” Thompson said.

This, he said, has now allowed the DABC to sell land at a discount to the latest announced industries instead of giving it away as an incentive for them to locate here.

Previously announced

The three previously announced manufacturing plants are these:

• ·         Aspen Aerogels, announced Feb. 17, 2022. Construction is now well underway on a 90-acre site in the DSDA’s Bruce Yawn Commerce Park along U.S. Highway 301 at the I-16 interchange. The company’s commitment is for a $325 million investment and at least 250 manufacturing jobs. Although announced earlier and not directly linked to the Hyundai factory, Aspen’s plant will make aerogel insulation, which is used in and around electric vehicle batteries.
• ·         Joon Georgia, a unit of established metal auto body parts manufacturer Ajin USA, a supplier to Hyundai Motor Group. Ajin has committed to invest $317 million and eventually employ 630 people at a plant to be built on an 83-acre site, also at Bruce Yawn Commerce Park. Gov. Kemp made the announcement Nov.  7.
• ·         The DABC itself revealed plans Dec. 21 for revalyu Resources, headquartered in Germany, to build a PET plastic-bottle recycling plant on a 43-acre site in Gateway Regional Industrial Park, which is on the other side of U.S.  Highway 301 South and a little closer to Statesboro. It is expected to create 71 jobs and require a $50 million investment in Phase 1, the only phase counted in the totals. Automotive materials are one of the many applications revalyu lists for recycled PET, also known as polyester.

Ecoplastic’s site

The 78-acre site offered for sale to Ecoplastic Corporation, which like Hyundai and Ajin is based in South Korea, is along U.S. Highway 301 but not in either of the named industrial parks.

Instead it takes most of a tract measuring a little over 100 acres, previously farmland, that the DABC bought as a 52-acre parcel in the summer and a separate almost 53-acre parcel in November, the same month the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners rezoned the combined tract for industrial uses. It is 1.3 miles north of the interchange but lies along the Statesboro city water, sewer and natural gas lines that extend to the interchange and  commerce park.

The development authority had the commissioners rezone a couple more, adjoining parcels for light industry this week as the authority acts to purchase them to have more land available for further prospects.

Not a gift

Under a lease that would eventually become a purchase, Ecoplastic will pay $2,032,000 for its site, with this price considered a $2.2 million discount, Steve Rushing, attorney to the DABC, said Thursday.

But in exchange for the phased-in job creation and its investment in the factory, the company will receive a 100% abatement from the county government portion of property tax for 10 years, followed by 50% abatement for five years. However, Ecoplastic Corporation would be expected to pay the school system and fire protection taxes from the beginning.

Both the discounted land price and the partial tax abatement are linked to phased goals for job creation and investment over each of the first eight years. If the company did not meet those goals, it could owe the DABC or the county more money under a “clawback” provision.

Enough workers?

With many of the jobs among the 1,400 total being phased in over a period of years, not all of the demand for workers will be immediate. But with the larger meta plant also in commuting distance, the development authority is part of discussions for where the workers will come from and where they will live.

“We feel as if this area is going to grow because of the opportunities that we’re presenting to the general public, and as a development authority, we’re pretty much achieving  our mission of having industry come  with capital investment  and  with good-paying  jobs for the citizens  of this area as well  as other areas, and the exposure is  going to cause us to get those employees,” said DABC Chair Billy Allen.

Allen, both a contractor with Snella Enterprises and a real estate agent with Berkshire Hathaway Kennedy Realty, said he is hearing firsthand in his work “lots of interest in folks wanting to move to Statesboro and the surrounding areas.”