By Ben Tobin, Greater Triangle Growth Reporter, Triangle Business Journal
A Japanese company that manufactures medical equipment is looking to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a new factory that would create hundreds of jobs in a growing Eastern North Carolina city.
Nipro is expected to announce Wednesday a roughly $400 million investment that will create 232 jobs in Greenville in Pitt County, according to sources with knowledge of the project.
This will be the company’s first manufacturing plant in North Carolina and fifth in the United States. The company, headquartered in Osaka, Japan, has two facilities in New Jersey, one in Virginia and one in Indiana.
Nipro did not respond to Triangle Business Journal’s requests for comment on its plans.
The move comes after the Pitt County Board of Commissioners voted in a June 17 meeting to approve economic development incentives for “Project Bluefin.” At the time, Kelly Andrews, Pitt County’s economic development director, described it as a “new industrial recruitment project in a key industry for Pitt County: life sciences.”
A public notice for the meeting said that the project would be an approximately $400 million investment that would create 232 jobs “with an average salary above the county’s current median average wage of $50,937.”
The county’s incentives package included an economic development grant equal to 70 percent of the net increase in ad valorem taxes paid by the company over a seven-year period for a two-phase project, with a cap of $9 million, as well as the conveyance of county-owned land. The county acquired the roughly 130-acre vacant parcel at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Highway and Old Creek Road for $3.8 million in July 2019, according to Pitt County deed records. The current market value of the land is $2.87 million.
“This is life sciences, so there will be all kinds of jobs,” Andrews said in the June 17 meeting. “There will be administration, there will be engineers. But certainly the majority will be high-skilled blue-collar jobs.”
The North Carolina Department of Commerce’s Economic Investment Committee on Wednesday approved a $2.4 million incentives package for the project.
Founded in 1954, Nipro has dozens of manufacturing plants and offices worldwide, employing more than 38,000 people. The company manufactures a wide array of products, from glass tubes to generic drugs to packaging equipment. Of its global markets, the Americas is the fastest-growing for the company, according to its annual report: net sales increased by 25.4 percent compared with the previous fiscal year to roughly $734.6 million.
Overall, the company saw net sales in 2023 of $3.4 billion.
The impending announcement continues the momentum for Greenville, which continues to attract business investments. Best known as being the home of East Carolina University and famous YouTuber “Mr. Beast,” the city’s population sat at just shy of 90,000 as of 2022.
In April, Vietnamese clean energy company Boviet Solar announced plans to spend nearly $300 million to establish a 1-million-square-foot facility in Greenville with 900 jobs.
Nipro is part of a string of investments that North Carolina has won from Japanese companies, which has been a priority of Gov. Cooper’s administration. Cooper hosted Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in April and has visited the country multiple times during his time as governor.
On Tuesday, Japanese candy maker Morinaga announced plans to build a new production facility at its site in Mebane.
Ben Tobin covers real estate and economic development in the Greater Triangle, focusing on the counties outside Wake and Durham. Have a tip? Reach him at btobin@bizjournals.com or (919) 327-1012. This article originally appeared on July 17, 2024 at the Triangle Business Journal’s website and is made available here for educational purposes only. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 106A-117 of the U.S. Copyright Law.
