Corning Inc. will bring a total of 410 new jobs to the Charlotte area as it opens a new optical cable plant in Catawba County and expands its huge optical fiber facility in Cabarrus County.
Corning will spend a total of $176 million at the two plants and bring jobs that average about $58,150 in annual wages to its new Newton facility and about $57,000 annual wage to its Midland facility.
In return for the jobs, Corning (NYSE: GLW) and its subsidiary Corning Optical Communications will get up to $4.7 million in Job Development Investment Grants, which rebates a portion of new employees’ state taxes to the New York company over the coming 12 years.
In return for the jobs, Corning (NYSE: GLW) and its subsidiary Corning Optical Communications will get up to $4.7 million in Job Development Investment Grants, which rebates a portion of new employees’ state taxes to the New York company over the coming 12 years.
Clark Kinlin, executive vice president of Corning Optical, notes that the company has a long history in North Carolina with 3,000 employees in five plants. Those include one of the world’s largest fiber manufacturing facilities in Midland and one of the globe’s largest fiber cabling plants in Hickory.
He says the expansions are a credit to “our highly skilled, diverse and dedicated employees who work and live” in the state.
N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper says the jobs are “high-tech” posts being added to the state’s economy by a company that continues “to innovate and invest in research and development” in North Carolina.
The Newton cabling plant will go into the former General Dynamics building on Prodelin Drive in Newton. The work involves Corning spending $67 million into refitting the building and bringing 210 jobs to the plant.
“Hickory – and now Newton – are a vital part of Corning’s 46-year history in North Carolina, where we invent, make and sell high-performance fiber optic solutions to global network operators,” Kinlin says.
There Corning will hire machine operators, distribution staff, maintenance personnel and other workers as it refits the Newton building.
In Midland, the types of jobs are very similar as Corning expands the plant with 200 additional jobs to the current staff of approximately 300. That addition gets more than half of the total investment with $109 million.
The Midland plant, located on U.S. Highway 601, opened in the late 1990s during the optical fiber boom times and quickly grew to 900. A crisis in worldwide overproduction of optical fiber forced the plant to trim to 200 employees in the early 2000s.
The announcement Monday follows Corning Optical’s decision to build its $38.7 million headquarters in at Riverbend Village in northwest Charlotte, a mixed-use center being developed by Simpson Commercial Real Estate of Greensboro. The company will also add 105 production jobs in Hickory has it moves the headquarters from that city.
Those moves were announced in September.
Ken Elkins
