Manufacturing

Manufacturing Mileage
With a $1.5 billion stake, GM invests in Northwest Louisiana for the long haul

General Motors spent $1.5 billion to retool its plant in Caddo Parish, and the investment unleashed a flood of economic activity.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter, Lady Di wed Prince Charles and Britney Spears was born. New, too, were the first Chevrolet S-10 pickups to roll off assembly lines in what would become a 2-million-square-foot fixture in the Northwest Louisiana economy.

A generation later, General Motors has retooled its plant, reinvested to the tune of $1.5 billion and reaffirmed its commitment to Northwest Louisiana.

So great has been GM’s impact on the region, the numbers can be hard to comprehend. They radiate in multiple directions, spinning off more jobs beyond the 3,000 who work directly at the automaker’s Caddo Parish site.

“When GM decided to spend $1.5 billion on their new facility here, it afforded us an opportunity to work with many new companies,” says Richard Bremer, president of the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce. “These various suppliers provide many components that go into the Chevy Colorado truck, the GMC Canyon truck and the Hummer H3. Not only was it tremendous for GM to invest $1.5 billion, but a dozen companies opened here, employing as many as 1,400 people.”

By the time new production lines were established in late 2003, GM already had cranked out 3.7 million pickups.

Today, the company produces mid-sized trucks and SUVs in Shreveport, where Android Industries handles transmission and engine sequencing for GM as a key supplier.

GM can make 800 to 1,000 trucks a day in two shifts, as vehicles snake along 28.5 miles of conveyors. The automaker’s Louisiana payroll tops $160 million annually.

“They really add a lot to our economy,” says Kurt Foreman, senior vice president of the Northwest Louisiana Economic Development Foundation. “They proved that we can be a home for substantial manufacturing.”

STRONG and DIVERSE

The region’s manufacturing sector is diverse, too, with food-service equipment maker Frymaster, communications tower builder CellXion, table glassware producer Libbey and containerboard manufacturer International Paper employing more than 500 people each.

Following Hurricane Katrina, new growth sectors have been flourishing, such as the $500 million-a-year Louisiana motion picture industry that brought Kevin Costner’s The Guardian and other recent filmmaking projects to the region.

And though a thriving medical community and Barksdale Air Force Base provide the region with more than 10,000 jobs apiece, business leaders aren’t resting on their laurels.

“Right now, we have 44 economic development projects in the pipeline,” Bremer says. “It may be expansion of facilities and companies that are already here, or it may be brand-new ones looking at our area. But that’s the most we have had in the past five years.”

Among the recently announced successes is Steelscape, a coiled steel company that will process 1 million tons of steel annually at the port and distribute it to original equipment manufacturers and construction customers.

For the region, that project represents a $200 million capital investment and an annual economic impact of $400 million.

Story by Gary Perilloux
Photo by Wes Aldridge

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