GE’s manufacturing operations in the U.S. have been on a roll lately, with advanced, R&D-driven techniques and processes, ground-up factory floor innovation and growing demand for exports fueling expansion in, most recently, New York, Texas and Pennsylvania. In the last eighteen months, GE has announced the creation of approximately 7,000 new high-tech manufacturing jobs. That total will increase with the announcement today in Mississippi that GE Aviation will invest $56 million to build a new 300,000 square foot facility in Ellisville that will create 250 new jobs within the next five years. The plant is expected to open in 2013. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour joined GE Aviation President and CEO David Joyce at the announcement.
The new facility will join an existing Mississippi aviation factory—opened in Batesville in 2008—in manufacturing advanced composite components for aircraft engines and systems. The Ellisville plant’s 250 new high-tech manufacturing jobs come on top of Batesville’s growing roster of 300 employees. GE Aviation expects to invest $150 million in the two locations by the end of the decade. The company has more than 30 locations across the U.S and announced with its joint venture companies new engine and service orders totaling $27 billion at the recent Paris Air Show.
Check out the video below to see workers in Batesville, MS, assembling carbon fiber composite fan blades for the GEnx engine, which powers the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner and 747-8.
“GE Aviation’s decision to expand its presence in Mississippi and build a new facility in Ellisville speaks volumes about the company’s ongoing confidence in Mississippi’s business climate, in our research capabilities and in our skilled workforce,” said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour. “We are excited to expand our production capability in Mississippi with the opening of a second plant that will create hundreds of new high-tech jobs this decade for the state,” said Joyce.
Breakthroughs in composite material technology at GE Global Research—sparked in part by more than $12 billion spent in research and development over the last decade—have allowed GE’s engineers to design and build aircraft engines and systems that provide greater durability and engine weight savings. Aircraft flying with the engines are more efficient and cost less to operate, maintain and replace.
