WARRICK COUNTY, Ind. —The North Warrick Industrial Park will get its first official tenant this morning, when North American Lighting breaks ground on a new $16 million facility at 10 a.m. The new plant will create around 40 jobs and could begin production in January.
North American Lighting is the largest nonaffiliated supplier of automobile lighting in North America, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koito Manufacturing Co. Ltd., of Japan. Spokesman Kirk Welter confirmed the company was building a tool shop, but wanted to keep some of the other details private until the groundbreaking.
"Our president really wants to keep it until the announcement (today)," said Welter. "We'll have officials over from Japan for the ceremony, and we'll make most of the announcement at that time."
Warrick County Economic Development Director Larry Taylor also declined to discuss specifics, but said the work to bring in the company had taken several months.
"We've been talking with (North American Lighting) since January," said "We've been working with the state's economic development corporation and the Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana. We were in competition with a location in Kentucky, but the package we put together and our location brought them to North Warrick."
Located near Elberfeld in the northwest corner of Warrick County, the industrial park has been vacant since the county bought the land in 2003. It is near the interchange between Interstate 64 and the new Interstate 69.
"In my mind, the county had a lot of foresight to develop that park," said Taylor. "It took a lot longer to develop I-69 than anybody would have thought, but now that that is in, things seem to be happening up there. This is a big deal, because this was a large investment for the county. The county strategically located that park to take advantage of the transportation options."
North American Lighting has been supplying the majority of vehicle manufacturers in the United States since 1983. The corporate offices of North American Lighting are located in Paris, Ill. The company has two other manufacturing facilities in Illinois, as well as others in Alabama and Michigan. The Warrick County location will be an injection molding facility to produce tools that will be used at the other locations.
"The jobs are just excellent," said Taylor. "They are machinists, tool makers and engineering jobs. Although it's not a lot of jobs, it is a very significant investment. The majority of the investment here is in the sophisticated machinery. For us, we can get companies to come in with production jobs that pay a little over minimum wage. But these jobs will pay more than $20 per hour."