An Australian technology company plans to open a manufacturing site in Bladen County, N.C. Gov. Josh Stein announced Thursday.
VectorTex USA will invest more than $7 million in a 25,000-square-foot site at the Elizabethtown Industrial Park, Stein said in a news release. The company plans to hire 44 employees with an average annual salary of $48,136.
The company is a subsidiary of Vector Technologies, which provides manufacturing services for several industries, including automotive. It also develops technology for oyster farming, Stein said. The company was founded in Australia in 1988 and has sites in Luxembourg, New Zealand, and Thailand. The Bladen County facility, which is expected to open early next year, will be its first in the United States.
“The support we have received from North Carolina and Bladen County has been exceptional, and we’re eager to create new opportunities as we bring our advanced engineering and manufacturing operations online,” Callum de Vries, technical business development manager at VectorTex USA, said in the news release.
Chuck Heustess, economic development director for Bladen County, said the company reached out to the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina in August and visited the Elizabethtown site. The company agreed to sign a lease in October.
“We were very fortunate to have a location that was in the right size range, and then when they came to see it, it was just a fortunate advantage that we had a clean room already built,” Heustess said.
The company will get a $120,000 grant from the One North Carolina Fund, which promotes economic development, if it meets certain targets.
Bladen Community College will help train employees, Heustess said. The company hopes to first hire a general manager and plant manager.
Heustess said one of the company’s first local projects will be manufacturing plastic oyster floats, which can protect oyster farms during major storms.