LITTLE ROCK — The expansion of Nestle Nutrition’s Gerber babyfood plant in Fort Smith is expected to create about 50 full-time jobs, as well as employ local contractors during construction, Nestle said in a news release Tuesday.
A cereal manufacturing line will be added to the approximately 900,000-square-foot plant, with construction starting immediately and expected to be completed by September 2012. Further renovations will help improve operations and increase production capacity.
The plant, at 4301 Harriet Ave., employs more than 650 people and makes a variety of Gerber products.
The economy of Fort Smith - the state’s second-largest city - and the surrounding region has depended heavily on manufacturing, and has been hard-hit in recent years as companies such as Whirlpool Corp., Trane Inc. and Rheem cut jobs. But other employers moving into the area are creating jobs, andbuttreussing the struggling manufacturing sector.
“Fort Smith is a town that has a large commitment of resources to manufacturing, so our basic approach is we’re as excited about 50 jobs as we are about 300, especially because it’s a local company expanding,” Kermit Kuehn, director of the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith’s Center for Business Research and Economic Development, said about Gerber’s expansion.
Kuehn said the region uses a “two-pronged” strategy for economic development. One approach is recruiting large corporations looking to build a new plant and create hundreds of jobs. The other involves recruiting smaller companies or helping them expand existing facilities.
While landing big-ticket projects like Mitsubishi’s planned $100 million windturbine assembly plant gives the local economy a muchneeded boost, Kuehn said, helping small firms expand is equally as important to the region.
“They’re already here, we know their needs and what they’re trying to do,” he said. “So it’s easier to persuade people who are already here to expand here. If we can expand their operations or work force here, we’re happy to be able to do that.”
In May, the latest month for which figures are available, unemployment in the Fort Smith Metropolitan Area rose to 7.8 percent from 7.6 percent the previous month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A year earlier, unemployment was at 7.9 percent. The Fort Smith area covers Sebastian, Crawford and Franklin counties in Arkansas and Leflore and Sequoyah counties in Oklahoma.
Last year, Mars PetCare US opened a plant in Fort Smith’s Chaffee Crossing Industrial Park. Umarex USA, a German air-gun maker, is completing a building there that will serve as its new North American headquarters. And Pradco Inc., a fishing-lure maker, plans to build a 300,000-square-foot facility at Chaffee Crossing.
Mitsubishi Power Systems Americas Inc., a Floridabased subsidiary of Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., will begin building its wind-turbine assembly plant this fall. Expected to open by 2012, the plant will employ more than 330 people, officials have said.
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Business, Pages 19 on 07/21/2010