City funds added to mix of job incentives

Greenville City Council has approved a series of grants and incentives tied to nearly 1,200 jobs coming to Pitt County in the next five years.

The council voted unanimously on Thursday to approve job creation grants for Attindas Healthcare Products and Nipro Medical Corp., supply a local match for a state building reuse grant for UNX-Christeyns and serve as the pass-through for another state grant that Greenville Utilities Commission will use in support of Boviet Solar.

“It’s pretty awesome to have four public hearings for job creation grants, building reuse grants for our community,” Mayor P.J. Connelly said.

Nipro Medical Corporation is a Japanese company that manufactures medical equipment, pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical packaging. It selected Greenville to build a new plant so it can be closer to existing customers in the United States, Uconda Dunn, vice president of business development with the Greenville ENC Alliance, told the council.

The council approved a job creation grant of up to $500,000 over five years for the company, which also received a state Job Development Investment Grant valued at nearly $2.5 million over 12 years and an incentive from Pitt County Government that gives the company up to $9 million in property tax savings over seven years.

The company broke ground for the new facility during a ceremony last month that gathered state and local officials at the 130-acre site at Old Creek Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard north of town. It recently completed the purchase of the site and opened an office in Greenville on Aug. 12, Dunn said.

The company plans to create 232 jobs over a five-year period and invest $398.2 million in that time frame, Dunn said. The average wage will be $56,147, she said.

The council OK’d a $50,000 grant for Attindas that will augment earlier county and state incentives to add two lines to the Greenville facility off of Old Creek Road. The grant is based on jobs created on or after Sept. 1.

The new lines will manufacture products the company is currently producing in Europe and China, Dunn said. It will save money to manufacture the products in the United States, she said.

“We are happy to have this happen here as opposed to another facility in the Northeast where they had the capacity to do it as well,” Dunn said.

The company plans to create 25 jobs over three years and invest $26.2 million during that period. The average wage of the jobs is $56,746.

“Greenville is not only bringing in new jobs, new companies, but we are working very closely with existing industries,” Dunn said.

The $4,000 for UNX-Christeyns is a 5 percent local match for an $80,000 building reuse grant the company is using to help refurbish and expand the former Karastan Mills building on Staton Road.

The company plans to create an additional 21 jobs over two years and invest $10.5 million in that same time frame. The average wage for the jobs is $59,857, Dunn said.

The state also awarded a $2 million grant from the Industrial Development Fund to the City of Greenville to serve as the pass-through for the GUC to build an electric substation to support Boviet Solar Technology, a Vietnamese company that announced in April it was buying and expanding the former Denso manufacturing facility on Sugg Parkway in Indigreen Corporate Park.

The grant requires a 5 percent local match to be funded by the city. Boviet Solar will bring more than 900 jobs to Pitt County and invest $294 million during the next five years.

Dunn said Boviet is already repairing and upgrading the former DENSO facility. The company completed the purchase of adjacent property two weeks ago, Dunn said.

Boviet has already started the hiring process and will start assembly in early 2025.

“I remember getting the notification when DENSO said it was going out of business. It was just, ‘Oh my gosh, this is horrible,’” Connelly said.

When DENSO, which manufactured small engines for windshield wipers, electric windows and other car parts, closed 500 jobs were lost, he said. Boviet plans to bring more than 900 jobs to the community.

“I think we’ve made very good progress in the use of that building since being vacated,” Dunn said.