By Ben Tobin, Greater Triangle Growth Reporter, Triangle Business Journal

An international clean energy company says it will invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a facility in Eastern North Carolina — a plan that calls for hundreds of new jobs.

The company, Boviet Solar of Vietnam, will spend nearly $300 million to establish a 1-million-square-foot facility in Greenville with 900 jobs. Incentives for the project were approved Friday morning during a meeting of the state’s Economic Investment Committee, part of the N.C. Commerce Department. The company is eligible for a JDIG grant worth more than $8 million.

Greenville beat out other finalist sites in Phoenix and Atlanta. The company told the state average wages for the jobs will be around $53,000. The facility will be located at the Greenville Industrial Park.

This marks the largest jobs investment tied to state incentives in North Carolina so far in 2024.

Boviet Solar is a Tier 1 solar technology company that specializes in manufacturing solar panels. It was founded in 2013 and does not currently have manufacturing operations in the United States. The company says it will create 908 jobs in Greenville by 2028.

The new facility is a major economic win 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.

Another company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, has pushed major expansion plans in Greenville in recent years.

Economic leaders in the city have been working to get big investments like these. In February, Triangle Business Journal reported that the Greenville Eastern North Carolina Alliance, a public-private partnership, sold land in the Indigreen Corporate Park off Sugg Parkway to Marlboro Development Team Inc. of South Carolina. The real estate developer plans to build a Class A industrial building that will have 100,440 square feet of space and be expandable to 234,360 square feet.

The Boviet Solar investment comes as North Carolina has been making a push to attract cleantech companies. Between 2017 and 2023, the state announced more than 17,500 jobs in the clean-energy sector, representing projects totaling than $22.1 billion in capital investment to North Carolina.

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. The preceding article originally appeared on April 26, 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.