[FreedomCalls]

Woo Hoo! This is good news for any of you laid-off FReepers in Georgia. Think "employee discount" and "manufacturers samples."

[Mind-numbed Robot]

Why didn't they build in China? Are they crazy?

Paging Willie Green. Paging Willie Green.

[Shooter 2.5]

Great news.

I like the location too. There's no sense to reward a state that won't let the employees own what they build.

[wcbtinman]

H&K is betting on the sunset of the AWB.

[zingzang]

It's going to employ 200 initially, and up to 500 in the long run. Just wait for the liberals to scream about these jobs. I can see it now..."Bush creates jobs that kill!!" "Bush only cares about destroying the environment and killing our children!!" Blah, blah, blah...as if the President is sitting behind his desk in the oval office making decisions about what plant locates it's business in what state. If the libs could ever wake up to this thing called the free market they might have a clue.

[TXnMA]

My bumper sticker looks something like this:

Insured by H&K

[Willie Green]

Gunmaker aims at $1 billion military contract

COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) — Locating a factory near Fort Benning could give a German gun manufacturer an advantage as it tries to land a $1 billion contract for the U.S. infantry´s next-generation rifle, a company official said.

Heckler & Koch began research and development last year on the XM8 Lightweight Assault Rifle, which ultimately could replace the U.S. Army´s M4A1 carbine and M16A2 rifle. The M16 has been manufactured by Colt since 1964.

Peter Simon, vice president of the gunmaker´s U.S. operations in Sterling, Va., said Columbus was a natural fit with its proximity to a major infantry training installation.

"At Fort Benning, you have this great diversity of units,´´ said Simon, a retired Army lieutenant colonel whose tours of duty included Fort Benning. "You have mechanized infantry from the 3rd Infantry Division, and you have the Rangers, and you´ve got several other units that might be capable of being part of the test bed.´´

Heckler & Koch, which is building a $20 million plant on 25 acres in Muscogee Technology Park, will use the state´s Quick Start training program at Columbus Technical College, Simon said.

The company is scheduled to break ground by November, with production beginning by the end of 2004. It expects to employ at least 80 people initially for the forging, molding and machining jobs, but that number could climb to as high as 500, Simon said.

The company is eligible for local property tax breaks and will receive $300,000 in state incentives. It also is expected to seek a bond issue from the Columbus Development Authority to build the 50,000-square-foot plant.

"The biggest driver was the economic viability of the agreement that we could strike with our host location,´´ Simon said. "But no one else had Fort Benning and nowhere else did we have that combination of proximity to our primary customer base, which is the military and law enforcement, and the economic business climate we were after.´´

Other states under consideration for the plant were Virginia, Florida, South Carolina and Texas, he said.

One piece of work includes a $4.8 million contract with the Transportation Security Administration to make 9,600 pistols over four years.

[harpseal]

Ping for good news.

On or off let me know.

[GovernmentShrinker]

Awesome! Let the Chinese make all the plastic trinkets. The USA will make the important stuff!

[Euro-American Scum]

Another gun maker, Glock, based in Austria, has North American headquarters in Smyrna. Glock pistols are used by 65 percent of American law enforcement agencies, according to the company's Web site.

I wasn't aware the Georgia site was involved in manufacturing. I thought it was a domestic distribution site.

[GatekeeperBookman]

http://www.hkpro.com/contents.htm

USP Compact .40 is THE handgun. Zero recoil. Over 20,000 rounds till service.

http://www.hkpro.com/uspc.htm

The USP Compact
Universale Selbstlade Pistole
Cal. 9mm x 19/.357 SIG/.40 S&W/.45 ACP

My wife can out-shoot your wife!

[THEUPMAN]

Ga. gives Daimler a deadline

By RHONDA COOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


The state of Georgia has told DaimlerChrysler AG it will wait longer for a commitment to build cars in Georgia but not forever.

State officials have given DaimlerChrysler until the end of this year to decide if it will build a $754 million van plant on state-owned property in Pooler near Savannah.

If there is no commitment, state officials will begin looking for someone else to use the land, which already has undergone $60 million in improvements, according to a letter sent to the German carmaker by Glenn Cornell, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Industry, Trade and Tourism.

Cornell said Friday the letter to DaimlerChrysler was not an attempt to "force the issue" but was only a report of where the state was in preparing a site that the carmaker has said it is considering.

Last month, DaimlerChrysler announced that it was delaying a final decision, as European sales of the Sprinter van continued to slow and the company nixed plans for a $1.6 billion assembly plant in Windsor, Ontario. However, DaimlerChrysler did not say that the Georgia project was dead.

"It's a great site, and we feel like there are [other] projects that would fit well on the site," Cornell said. "The letter was never intended to be any kind of forcing of the issue. It was simply to lay out the groundwork. ... It's prudent for us to look at all the various aspects of the project. We've talked with them about this. They understand, and they agree. It's just the right thing to do and the right way to do business."

The carmaker has been offered $320 million in state and local financial incentives. The van plant would be Georgia's single largest economic development project, by employing 3,300 people and adding more than $250 million to the region's economy. Sprinters now are built in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Georgia taxpayers are spending $60 million on grading for a factory pad, building "drainage structures" and constructing a four-lane road to the site. That work is supposed to be finished in October.

At the same time, the state has stopped work on putting in rail lines to the site, designing and building visitor and training centers, extending utilities and building two other roads, Cornell wrote.

"While our commitment to the project is unchanged, the delay has forced us to re-examine our position regarding the long-term availability to the property," he wrote. "We have a responsibility to the citizens of the state to realize an acceptable return on the investment made by Georgia on behalf of DaimlerChrysler."

Cornell wrote that it will be difficult to protect state funding to the project without a commitment from the company, especially because the 2004 General Assembly will be looking for cuts to offset falling revenue.

"Our sincere hope is that the company will make a decision in the next few months to proceed with the project," Cornell wrote. "At the present time, we do not have plans to market the site to other users. However, as we reach the end of the year without a decision from DaimlerChrysler, we will be compelled to again evaluate our position on this issue."

Trevor Hale, a spokesman for DaimlerChrysler, could not confirm Friday whether the firm's officials had received the letter, but he said "nothing has changed" in regard to the discussions with Georgia.

When the delay was announced, the world's third-largest automaker did not rule out putting a 2.3 million-square-foot plant on Georgia's coast, but it also has not said when the deal might be back on the table.

[AdamSelene235]

Hmmmnnn.

I wonder if we will have domestically produced STG's in the near future?