Home > About BNE > Press Room > 2011 Archive > September > Milestone’ Project Begins in the Falls

 
‘Milestone’ Project Begins in the Falls
 

By Mark Scheer

The Tonawanda News

Thu Sep 08, 2011

NIAGARA FALLS — On the eve of President Obama’s scheduled announcement about a jobs growth plan for America, local and state officials gathered Wednesday to celebrate the start of construction on a $430 million manufacturing plant that promises to bring several hundred new employment opportunities to the Niagara Falls area.

Although construction actually started several days ago, representatives from Greenpac, LLC hosted a symbolic groundbreaking ceremony at the Royal Avenue site where the company is building a 300,000-square-foot containerboard mill that they say will be unique in terms of its environmentally friendly manufacturing system.

“It’s one of the largest of its kind in North America and we picked Niagara Falls to do it,” said Marc-Andre Depin, president and CEO of Norampac, one of several private-sector partners involved in the project’s development.

The new plant will be located on property behind the existing Norampac facility located at 4001 Packard Road. Once completed, it will produce lightweight linerboard used to make boxes commonly

purchased by Kraft, Kellogg’s and other companies involved in the food and beverage business. Greenpac, LLC is a corporation formed by Norampac and several other project partners, including Jamestown Container, Containerboard Partners and Cascades, Inc., a Canadian-based paper and tissue products group. Depin said the company expects to need more than 300 workers during the estimated two-year construction period. The project is slated for completion in the summer of 2013. Greenpac has committed to creating 108 new permanent jobs once production begins.

“This groundbreaking symbolizes the beginning of a new era for Norampac and partners in our industry,” Depin said.

The facility and the jobs it promises comes at a cost. Area public-sector partners, led by the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, have been working for about five years to lure Greenpac to Niagara Falls. They got the job done, in part, by offering a generous package of incentives, including $60 million in brownfield tax credits from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, $9 million in Empire Zone tax credits, a $3.7 million incentive from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority for the purchase of high-efficiency equipment and 10 megawatts in low-cost hydropower from the New York State Power Authority.

Depin said the incentives, coupled with the company’s ability to pair its new plant with an existing Norampac plant, made Niagara Falls the right choice for the project partners.

“We looked at a few sites,” Depin said. “The package that the state had given us, with all the parties involved, made this site more attractive for us. We already have a mill here so there’s synergy between the two mills.”

Sam Hoyt, the former New York state lawmaker who now serves as the vice president for regional economic development for the Empire State Development Corp., characterized the overall package of incentives as “very substantial, but reasonable” given the level of return offered to the community. Hoyt said Greenpac’s partners could have chosen “anywhere else in the world” to do their project, but chose Niagara Falls because local and state public-sector partners were able to accommodate their needs. Hoyt said the project and the incentives were fully supported by his boss, Gov. Andrew Cuomo. He hailed it as a sign that Cuomo’s bid to restore private-sector confidence in New York state is working.

“We’re looking at nearly a half a billion dollars of private-sector investment right here in Niagara County in New York state,” Hoyt said. “That is a huge victory.”

 Mayor Paul Dyster called the project a “milestone” in the rebirth of the manufacturing sector in Niagara Falls and suggested the participation of groups like the BNE, the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency, Empire State Development and other entities may bode well for the development of similar projects in the future.

“That’s the new normal now,” Dyster said. “It takes absolutely everybody under these difficult economic circumstances that we face across not just North America, but the world. It takes everybody putting their shoulder to the wheel to get a fantastic project like this off the ground and that’s exactly what happened in this case.”

Dyster, who faces a challenge from three opponents in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, has cited the growth of so-called ‘green’ manufacturing jobs as a priority during his first term as mayor. He hailed the Greenpac project as a prime example of the type of manufacturing he believes the city needs - the type that offers not only jobs, but production processes that involve the re-use of old materials while limited the impact on the local environment.

“Manufacturing has to be one of the key components in the economic revitalization of Niagara Falls, Niagara County, Western New York and, in fact, across North America,” Dyster said. “But manufacturing can’t be the manufacturing of our grandfathers’ generation. No longer can we afford the environmental cost of development that does not pay respect to the environment. That’s why this project is such a fantastic project. Greenpac. It says it all.”

Depin said the new plant will feature more high-tech, computerized equipment than Norampac’s existing Falls plant. As a result, he said, the company will be looking for workers with a higher skill level as it goes about filling those 108 new positions. Depin said the jobs will pay between $15 and $22 per hour, depending on skill level and experience. He stressed that the company intends to tap into the local workforce and will be making public announcements about the availability of positions as the plant gets closer to opening.

“Our goal is to get the best candidates from the community if at all possible,” he said.