Savannah Chamber

49 Gulfstream Aerospace employs approximately 11,000 workers in Savannah for production, maintenance, engineering, and research and development. Looking forward, ample demand exists for the fleet of Gulfstream aircraft. Recently, Gulfstream announced this fleet will expand with the production of the G700. The G700 will feature the tallest, widest, and longest cabin in the industry with leading range and speed capabilities. While the G700 will not be available until 2022, Gulfstream delivered more than 25 of its G500 models in the past year including its first delivery to Europe. Overall, the G500 holds 35 city-pair speed records and earned the 2019 Flying Innovation Award. In 2019, Gulfstream sold their 400 th jet from the G650 fleet, a fleet that holds over 100 city-pair records. Gulfstream's Savannah campus hosts the world's largest purpose-built maintenance facility, a 700,000 square foot building that serves as home for the largest volume of aircraft maintenance activity on the globe. In 2019, Gulfstream completed construction of the new $55 million East Campus service center adding 202,000 square feet of hangar and shop space. The expansion creates approximately 200 jobs and allows crews to work on 100 planes per day. A new training program starting in 2020, partners Gulfstream, Savannah-Chatham County Public School System, and Savannah Technical College to provide high school students with programs that teach aerospace technologies, basic aviation meteorology, and aircraft maintenance. JCB remained busy in 2019, and its business activity shows no sign of slowing. With a workforce of 600 employees, the Pooler facility hosts manufacturing operations and the offices of the company's North American headquarters. In 2019, JCB won a contract with the Canadian government worth approximately $2 million. In September 2019, JCB produced the 19C-1E, the company's first fully electric mini excavator, available to North America. The excavator is the first of JCB's clean technology electric products and is expected to reduce service costs up to 70% compared to similar, non-electric products. Recently, JCB made the 1CXT Compact Backhoe Loader available in the U.S. It is the only tracked backhoe loader in the North America. In May 2019, JCB extended its current contract with the U.S. Army for $21 million to produce High Mobility Engineer Excavators (HMEEs). This contract extends through 2020 while JCB and the Department of Defense finalize a multi-year contract for HMEE production. The Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) continues to work with partners at the state and local level to attract new job opportunities and investment to Chatham County. In 2019, SEDA helped facilitate 1,306 new job opportunities and $561 million in investment including five office and headquarter announcements. Thirty-one percent of announcements in 2019 were advanced manufacturing. In 2018, SEDA hosted the groundbreaking of the 685-acre Savannah Manufacturing Center, which continued to development in 2019. Basic infrastructure investment at the center will be completed in 2020. The Savannah Film office had a record breaking $126 million in direct spend which equates to an economic impact of more than $254 million by entertainment productions in Chatham County. In a move that supports workers in manufacturing and other economic sectors, SEDA established the Workforce Initiatives Fund in the amount of $375,000 to assist licensed child care facilities in Chatham County to become Quality Rated through capital improvement mini-grants. SEDA was involved in the creation of The Bridge Fund to help fund the launch and management of a seed fun that will invest in high growth potential startups in an eight-county region. TradeBridge, a business and trade development program developed by SEDA/World Trade Center Savannah with partners in Wexford, Ireland continued to generate tangible results with the ribbon cutting on a Georgia Southern University location in Wexford and the establishment of the North American headquarters of an Irish marine technology company, Raceix. The Bryan County Development Authority had a very productive year in 2019. AGCO, a Duluth, Georgia-based company, opened a 75,000 square foot facility in the Interstate Centre industrial park for their Massey Ferguson line of tractors. The project represents a capital investment of over $8 million. They will be joined by Preci-Dip, a Swiss manufacturer of military and aerospace electrical components that opened its first U.S. facility in a $13 million investment at the Interstate Centre. Further, CZM Foundation Equipment, which has had an assembly center in the city of Pembroke since 2012, announced that the company would expand its assembly operations into a new 38,000 square foot facility in the Interstate Centre II industrial park. The $6 million project will also host the company's relocating headquarters and engineering operations. In total, the projects represent $27 million in investment and the creation and/or retention of over 180 jobs. Bulloch County manufacturing added 5% to its workforce for the second consecutive year to stand at 2,200 workers by mid- 2019. Briggs & Stratton's addition of the Vanguard commercial engine line spurred a 36% jump in employment to 544 workers while Great Dane's workforce expanded 21% to 483 jobs. Work on site preparation at the Southern Gateway Commerce Park will result in a 180 acre PAD ready site for additional manufacturing and/or distribution projects. The Highway 67 widening project

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