BLUE RIDGE —- Georgia’s momentum in the automotive industry remains strong despite recently coming up short for a $500 million Volvo plant to rival South Carolina, officials said Friday.
During a regular board meeting of the state Department of Economic Development, the agency’s head of global commerce likened the Volvo pursuit to being in a “championship game” that featured “lead changes” throughout the recruitment, but didn’t break Georgia’s way.
“We will take a lot of lessons away from that,” Tom Croteau, the department’s top international recruiter, said without getting into specifics and without uttering the name Volvo.
On Monday, Volvo formally announced it would build a factory near Charleston, S.C., where it plans to employ 4,000 workers. Georgia pitched a site in Bryan County near Savannah.
Still, the board congratulated the department’s efforts. Economic development commissioner Chris Carr said the state’s approach — involving cooperation from multiple counties and the involvement of several major utilities and various agencies — is quickly becoming the model for large recruitment projects.
“I am disappointed in the outcome, but not in the effort,” Carr said. State officials are beginning a debriefing process, while also keeping the recruitment of Volvo open.
They have declined to release the state’s offer of incentives, which Carr described as “aggressive.” The package likely was valued well into the hundreds of millions. South Carolina offered $150 million in grants and bonds, plus an undetermined amount of state and local tax breaks and other aid.
Georgia officials say the scope of what South Carolina wants to do to fill a broad swath of wetlands and restore wetlands elsewhere is unprecedented and federal approval will be difficult. South Carolina has disputed that and said its wetlands mitigation efforts on past projects have won praise.
Georgia officials have declined to say much more about the recruitment effort because they consider the project to be ongoing in case Volvo runs into environmental roadblocks.
The Volvo decision dampened what has been an active year for the department. Economic development officials say their recruitment efforts have resulted in $3.7 billion in new corporate investment in the state through the current fiscal year to date. That’s in line with last year’s figures. But the projected new jobs number — 23,287 — from planned projects is up 21 percent vs. the same period last fiscal year, the department said.
Georgia has noted successful automotive recruitments, including the U.S. headquarters of Mercedes-Benz, an expanded Porsche North America headquarters and auto parts companies such as Haring and GEIGER. Georgia is well-positioned, Carr said, to attract auto parts plants for Southeastern car factories, including Kia, Hyundai, Mercedes, BMW and Volkswagen.
