SAN ANTONIO — Texas First Lady Cecilia Abbott was among the honored guests at Tuesday's groundbreaking festivities for a 720,000-square-foot factory expected to create 1,580 new jobs in Bexar County.
The newest factory from JCB, an England-based manufacturer of heavy equipment and machinery, costs about half a billion dollars and was announced last October. It's situated on a 400-acre site on the county's south side, where it'll bring hundreds of jobs over the next five years.
Speaking about the kind of workers the company will be looking for, Richard Fox-Marrs, the president and CEO of JCB North America, said "attitude is everything."
"The perfect employee for us is someone who wants to come to work every day, (who) makes a difference, wants to be trained, wants to learn, wants to progress with a great attitude," he said. "I think that's the perfect person for us."
Bexar County approved more than $11.7 million in incentives to bring the facility to town. It will be located at 13610 Highway 16 on the south side.
When completed, the Bexar County plant will be JCB's second-largest in the world, behind only the company's flagship facility in England. Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai said the plant will have an estimated $30 billion economic impact over the next 10 years.
"We appreciate the connectivity of San Antonio. The proximity to ports (and) proximity to our supply chain, coupled with the people, made it a really obvious choice for us," Fox-Marrs said about the decision to come to Texas.
JCB's only other existing U.S. plant opened in Savannah in 2001, according to a press release. The company will celebrate 80 years in 2025.
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