A global engine manufacturer and power generation company is basing its regional operations in Atlanta, aiming to attract the city’s workforce to tackle supply chain issues and prepare for electrification.
Cummins Inc., a 104-year-old company based in Indiana, is turning 22,000 square feet within an Atlantic Station office building into its Southeast hub. The office will house the company’s supply chain and information technology teams when it opens in late summer or early fall with 100 employees.
Cummins leaders told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the office building’s proximity to Atlanta’s universities attracted them in their search of diverse talent. During a Thursday ribbon-cutting ceremony, Mayor Andre Dickens said they made the right decision, gesturing toward the windows on the eighth floor of 201 17th Street to make his point.
“From this window, you can see Georgia Tech, you can see Georgia State, and there’s a lot of trees but you can see the Atlanta University Center and SCAD,” Dickens said. “There’s all of this talent right here, very close to you.”
By opening its Cummins Atlanta Hub, the company joins a number of tech firms that have opened technology centers or office campuses in Midtown Atlanta in recent years, including Microsoft, NCR and Google, to tap into the diverse talent graduating from the city’s higher education institutions.
Cummins designs, manufactures, distributes and services multiple power products, ranging from internal combustion engines to fuel systems to electric power generation systems. It employs roughly 73,600 people and earned about $2.2 billion in profit on sales of $28.1 billion last year.
The publicly traded company has existing facilities in Clayton County, which President and CEO Jennifer Rumsey said will help Cummins consolidate their workforce around the hub.
Rumsey added that Georgia’s emergence as a leader within the electric vehicle and battery industry is also a benefit. Gov. Brian Kemp’s office said since 2020, the state has recruited more than 40 EV-related projects totaling 28,400 announced jobs and $22.7 billion in anticipated investment. These include EV factories from Hyundai Motor Group and Rivian.
“Electrification is a part of our strategy for growing and evolving the company for commercial and industrial equipment,” she said. “So having that as a focus in the state is a nice added benefit.”
The state and local governments have offered billions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives to court EV-related companies, but Kemp said during Thursday’s event that Georgia’s talent pipeline remains central to the state’s pitch to employers.
“(Talent) means a lot more than incentives most of the time, because you can’t build something and you can’t solve problems if you don’t have the people to do that,” he said.
Cummins did not receive any discretionary incentives from the state but will likely qualify for job creation tax credits.
Credit: Natrice Miller / Natrice.Miller@ajc.com
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