Caterpillar to build factory near Athens

The project, larger than Gulfstream Aerospace’s 2010 announcement of a 1,000-job expansion of its facilities in Savannah, is good news for Georgia, where the unemployment rate continues to lag behind the nation’s.

Georgia has been among a number of states wooing Caterpillar. In November, the heavy equipment maker announced plans to open a new manufacturing facility for mini-hydraulic excavators and small track-type tractors.

North Carolina was in the running for the plant just a few days ago, said N.C. state Rep. Dewey Hill, who represents an area near Wilmington that he said had been considered.

Caterpillar has a division headquarters in Cary, N.C., near Raleigh, and The Associated Press reported recently that Caterpillar officials wanted to locate the factory nearby.

But Georgia appears to have risen to the forefront most likely because of access to the Port of Savannah, Hill said Thursday evening.

“They’re looking for bigger and longer-term things,” he said of Caterpillar. “Shipping overseas to other ports is going to be very important.”

A more than 900-acre so-called “mega site” that could accommodate a major factory, known as the Orkin tract, straddles Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties near the intersection of Ga. 316 and U.S. 78.

Caterpillar’s search for a new facility was fueled largely by a strategic decision to shift production from Japan to a site closer to its large base of customers in North America and Europe, the company said in a statement last fall. The machines are currently made at Caterpillar’s facility in Sagami, Japan.

“Producing these machines at a North American location will put us in the best possible position to serve our customers in the building construction industry,” Caterpillar vice president Mary Bell said in November, when the company announced it would build a new U.S. factory.

Bell cited the need to minimize logistics costs for Caterpillar’s domestic and export customers as a requirement in choosing a site for the new facility. Caterpillar originally announced it planned to make a decision on the site by the end of last year with construction to start in the first half of 2012.

Caterpillar has said work at the facility will include major fabrications, paint and final assembly. Once the North American plant is completed, the Japan location will serve as a high-tech component facility.

The company posted record-breaking 2011 sales and revenues of $60.1 billion, a 41 percent jump from 2010.

Staff Writer Nancy Badertscher contributed.