Overview
• The plant would open in an industrial building on Dunn and Weeks roads on the east side of Fayetteville.
• The Fayetteville City Council voted unanimously to offer the company a grant of $54,600 to pick the city.
• The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to consider another $54,600 grant for the company on Monday.
Fayetteville is competing with a community in Georgia for an electric motor factory that promises to hire 104 people and pay them an average of $65,000 a year.
That compares to Cumberland County’s average annual wage of $49,382, according to a legal advertisement about the project.
The Fayetteville City Council voted unanimously November 9 to offer the company a $54,600 grant to come here. The Cumberland County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to consider a similar grant, also worth $54,600, at its meeting on Monday.
The vote will follow a public hearing on the topic. Members of the public who want to speak at the hearing may sign up online or call 910-678-7771.
The state is considering grants for workforce development, said Robert Patton, the executive vice president of the Fayetteville Cumberland Economic Development Corp., at the council meeting. The state requires the grants from the city and county to match its grants, he said.
The city and county said in legal ads to notify the public of public hearings for the grants that the local governments “will recover the cost and the public will benefit through future property and business taxes, stimulation of the economy, promotion of business, and the creation of new jobs.”
The factory, which Patton said would be run by an American company, would be set up in a recently constructed, 54,600-square-foot industrial building for lease on Weeks Road at Dunn Road, on the east side of the city. It’s on property the city annexed in 2022 for industrial development. Grant-Murray Real Estate has the listing.
Photos show a vast space in a metal building. It’s next to an Amazon depot on Dunn Road, and near the NVR Inc. factory that makes trusses and other components for site-built homes.
The property is 8.65 acres, according to county land records, and the land and building are valued at $2.6 million. The owner is NC Fayetteville Dunn LLC of Greenville, South Carolina.
The name of the electric motor company has not been made public. Instead, it’s being referred to by a code name, Project Vermilion. Merriam-Webster defines vermilion as a vivid-red orange color, and as a bright red pigment.
If the company opens its factory in Fayetteville, it will spend $5.1 million to buy real and personal property, generate more than $157,000 in property taxes over 10 years, and add $9.7 million of annual payroll income to the area, Patton said.
Local officials did not say where in Georgia the company is considering locating.
A series of local and state incentives totaling about $815,000 helped convince SteelFab in September to proceed with a $22 million expansion of its Fayetteville facility, a project that is projected to add 42 jobs.
In July, global drone manufacturer Skyeton, armed with $743,000 in local and state incentives, picked Fayetteville to build its first manufacturing facility in North America.
Plant to Make Brushless Electric Motors
The Project Vermilion factory would make brushless electric motors, Patton said. Depending on their size and design, brushless motors are used in many types of consumer, commercial, medical, aerospace, and industrial products, according to Stepperonline, an electric motors vendor. These include aerial drones, home appliances, medical devices, robotics, and electric cars.
“Brushless” describes the internal design of the motors.
Simple electric motors use a component called a brush to transfer electric current through the motor to spin its output shaft, according to Renesas Electronics Corp.. A motor’s brushes constantly contact the spinning shaft.
Brushless motors spin the shaft without physical contact between the shaft and the electricity source.
Brushless motors are more complicated and expensive to make than brushed motors, but brushless motors are also more efficient, use less electricity, are better at producing torque, and their operating speed can be more precisely controlled, Renesas said.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
