By Billy Davis

A behind-the-scenes project became public Monday when GE Aviation announced a $100 million investment in its new Batesville plant.

GE plans to add 350 jobs to the Batesville Composites Operation, topping out with a workforce of 475, announced Panola Partnership CEO Sonny Simmons.

A memorandum of understanding, now in its final stages, requires GE Aviation to hire the 350 workers within three years, Simmons told The Panolian.  

The Batesville plant topped 100 employees this month with a new round of hirings, but speculation of a growing workforce has been brewing ever since the facility became operational in the fall of 2008.

That speculation only grew when Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, speaking at last year’s grand opening, said the company has lined a wall with employee footlockers – 475 of them.

GE Aviation, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, announced in 2006 that it planned to build a plant in Mississippi, where the company had partnered with Mississippi State’s College of Engineering to design and test composite materials for aircraft engines.

The formal announcement that GE had picked a manufacturing site in Batesville came in May 2007.

Duke Construction built the current 300,000-square-foot plant on a 90-acre site in east Batesville.

GE Aviation announced early on that the Batesville plant would manufacture a “fan blade platform,” installed between the fan blades and the engine. The plant then added a second line to manufacture the fan case assembly, the circular structure that encloses the front fan.

Both the fan blade platform and fan case are made of carbon fiber and epoxy resin composite material.

Most of the company’s $100 million investment will be for newly purchased equipment and an addition to the present building, according to Simmons.  

Simmons reported the economic development news at the county supervisors’ meeting in Batesville, where he was joined by Batesville Mayor Jerry Autrey, state Rep. Warner McBride, and representatives from the Miss. Development Authority (MDA).

The state of Mississippi has pledged $8 million to help GE with its expansion, announced MDA representative Kathy Gelston.  

McBride later told supervisors the state legislature pledged the $8 million during a special session, called to work on the state budget, earlier this year.

“This is an exciting day for Panola County,” McBride said of Monday’s announcement.  

Gelston and others also made public Panola County’s role in the GE expansion: payments of general obligation bonds to build a TVEPA substation.  

In lieu of taxes, GE Aviation will pay a property tax fee which county government will use to service the debt on the infrastructure investment.

“It doesn’t cost the taxpayers of the county anything,” Gelston told the county board.  

Bill McKenzie, the county board attorney, stated at one point that Panola County had pledged $4 million to fund the infrastructure improvements.

McKenzie, as the county attorney, obligingly pointed out the “worst case scenario” to supervisors – even if GE Aviation closed its plant, the county would be required to make the bond payments.

“That’s the risk in the deal,” he explained.

McKenzie also said he had been concerned about county government making the bond payments before the property fees reached the county. GE Aviation, apparently addressing that concern, had agreed to make the first payment on the bonds, he further explained.

After the meeting, Simmons said GE Aviation had hoped to have its expansion “up and running” by July of 2010. But back-and-forth negotiations and “document swapping” may have delayed that date, he said.

The jump in jobs at GE Aviation only adds to a county where industrial employment already accounts for a healthy number of full-time jobs. Eighteen percent of the workforce is employed in industry – more than any other county in North Mississippi.

GE officials have said the assembly line jobs start at $14 an hour plus benefits. An annual payroll of 475 workers, not including pay raises and management salaries, would add $13.8 million annually to the local economy.