GE put the finishing touches on a three-year, $40 million expansion at GE Lighting’s Hendersonville, N.C., production plant for manufacturing LED circuit boards. The boards, which were previously outsourced to overseas vendors, bring new capabilities into the plant, while accelerating customer response times, GE said.
“The boards are the source of light for LED fixtures and are the latest example of the vast transformation of this nearly 60-year-old, one-million-square-foot plant. Over the past three years, the plant has turned itself from a producer of traditional lighting technology to an LED powerhouse, bringing in 12 new LED product and component lines, including canopy lighting, roadway lighting, parking lot area lights, parking lot wall lighters and decorative outdoor products— a list that continues to grow. Today the plant exports nearly 30 percent of its products, illuminating emerging markets like Saudi Arabia, and turning the lights on in popular cities and sites in places like Hungary, Brazil and Canada, as well as many areas in between.”
The plant has added more than 100 contract and full-time positions in the past year. Additional jobs are expected with new investments in 2015.
In a separate announcement, GE also said it will build a new plant in Pennsylvania, in Findlay Township outside Pittsburgh, that will focus on advancing manufacturing technology with the goal of developing integrated software and production systems that can be used by GE facilities worldwide. The new facility represents a $32 million investment over three years by the company and will result in the creation of 50 high-tech engineering jobs initially, in disciplines ranging from mechanical and electrical to systems and software engineering. Construction is expected to begin in March 2015 to be completed by September 2015.