Solar Array, Gen. Mills detail expansions - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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broke ground April 5 on the $100 million, 176,000-square-foot expansion of its manufacturingfacility here, Keitj Bone, general manager of the loca facility, told members of . AED held its quarterly meeting Thursdauat . Joe president and CEO of SolarArraty Ventures, outlined his company’s plan to builde a massive solar manufacturing plant on the city’s General Mills’ expansion should be completed by Bone said. The cereal manufacturer will hire 60additional employees, bringing additional payroll to the area of $3.5 The expansion also brings $30 millionh in spending to New Mexico.
The Albuquerque City Council approvera $100 million industrial revenue bond deal for the compangy in February. BE&K Corp. from North Carolina landeed the design/build contract to build the expansion, but Bone said 80 percent of the firm’s spending and employeesz willbe local. The precast panela being used in the constructionh are manufacturedin Belen. General Mills has been in Albuquerquesinc 1991. Its current facility is located near Paseol del Norte and Edith and has190 employees, with an annual payrol l of $12 million, said Bone. The 275,000-square-foot planyt produces about 135 million pounds annuall y of 35different cereals.
The facility also has a lab on-sited where the instructions for bakinb General Mills products at high altitudes are The company has givenabout $5 million 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 looks for inrecruiting companies: communithy involvement. Hudgins said Solar Array plans to break ground by the third quarter of this year ona 225,000-square-foot thin-filmm photovoltaic manufacturing plant in the Corderio Mesa business park, west of the mattress The company plans to add three more buildingsd of that size as it grows, he said, with each facilitt employing about 225.
Its annuakl payroll in the first phase woulsdbe $14 million. About five percent of the jobs wouldpay $100,000, 45 percenrt would pay $70,000 and half of the jobs would pay The capital investment for the first phase will be $170 millionn and the company woulsd spend $40 million annually for raw materials. The firs t phase is expected to have a capacity of75 megawatts, but that woul d grow to 300 mw with the full buildout. The plant also will have a space that will serve as a communituy andeducational center. Solar Arrat is seeking $175 million in industrial revenue bondds fromBernalillo County.
The company is working to raise $210 millionm in debt and equity, Hudgins Hudgins said New Mexiclo beat out two other states for the despite the fact that it did not offer the largest incentives. But the coordination among localk and state government officials and other parties made New Mexic o far more efficient in establishing a planning framework that the companyg could then use to plan a budget for the hesaid “That was a major issue for us,” Hudginz said. He also praised the labor force here and theeducationall institutions. The facility is being designesd byPageSoutherlandPage LLP, which has Texas officexs in Austin, Dallas and Houston, as well as Denver, D.C.
and London, U.K. Hoffman Construction, based in Ore., is building the facility.