What is Acuity Brands?
Acuity Brands, based in Atlanta, is a major manufacturer of indoor and outdoor lighting products for homes and businesses. The company also makes sophisticated control systems. Acuity spun out of National Service Industries more than a decade ago, and initially included NSI’s lighting and chemical businesses. Zep, the chemical business, later separated from Acuity. Acuity has about 7,000 employees worldwide. Its brands include Lithonia Lighting, Mark Architectural Lighting, American Electric Lighting and Acuity Controls.
Atlanta-based lighting company Acuity Brands will create 700 jobs over the next five years in metro Atlanta — many of them high-paying technology jobs — in a major expansion of its local workforce.
Acuity, a global maker of indoor and outdoor lighting fixtures, said it will create a technology and innovation center in Decatur and expand existing facilities in Rockdale County. The company’s total investment is expected to exceed $16 million.
Acuity’s history in metro Atlanta stretches back decades. Acuity was the lighting and chemical division of the National Service Industries conglomerate before NSI spun off the company more than a decade ago. The chemical division, Zep, later became independent.
Acuity makes lighting products under several major brands, including Lithonia Lighting. The company has about 7,000 employees worldwide and reported about $2.4 billion in sales in its latest fiscal year.
“This multiyear investment will help Acuity Brands foster a cutting-edge work environment for our people that will accelerate our collaboration and innovation processes, as well as help us retain and attract world-class talent,” Vernon J. Nagel, chairman, president and CEO, said in a news release.
A spokeswoman for the state Department of Economic Development said in an email the average salary for the new jobs is expected to be $80,000.
The agency has approved a grant of $750,000 to help Acuity’s recruitment. The company is also eligible for tax credits for new jobs it creates over several years that could total millions of dollars.
Residential and commercial construction has rebounded since the deep freeze of the Great Recession, and Acuity’s expansion could be a sign of continuing confidence.
“We would expect lighting to do better as residential real estate and the commercial real estate market come back,” said Roger Tutterow, an economist at Kennesaw State University.
Georgia was hit particularly hard by the housing collapse and recession. Construction employment plummeted and carpet mills in the Dalton area shed thousands of jobs as home buying and building dried up.
Construction work has returned, particularly in apartment development. Flooring manufacturing has seen a resurgence with Mohawk Industries, Shaw Industries and Engineered Floors announcing plans to hire thousands of workers at new or retooled factories.
Acuity plans to renovate a building it owns in the Decatur area to develop new lighting technologies, and about 200 software and electrical engineers and staff will be relocated from a Conyers facility to Decatur, a company release said. The project is expected to be finished by the middle of 2015.
Before the end of this year, Acuity also will start a renovation of its Conyers campus.
The Acuity announcement comes in the late stages of a heated governor’s race that has begun to focus on economic policy.
Georgia’s August unemployment rate ranked highest in the nation, two percentage points above the national average. The September rate, which dipped slightly to 7.9 percent, is also expected to be among the nation’s highest; the rankings will be released Tuesday.
Gov. Nathan Deal’s re-election campaign has touted Georgia’s position as the state with the top business climate, as ranked by several media outlets. Deal and his camp also have boasted of 300,000 private sector jobs added during his tenure, which started amid darker economic times.
But opponents, particularly Democrat Jason Carter, have used the state’s lackluster unemployment rate to hammer Deal’s record.
Deal, in a release from his office, said, “When a successful Georgia operation such as Acuity Brands decides to expand its facility and its employment roster, it’s a win for all concerned, especially for our workforce.”
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