SURPRISE, AZ-Arizona is quickly becoming the solar manufacturing capital of the US. Two Spanish solar manufacturers have acquired a total of 45 acres in Skyway Business Park to build new facilities.
Rioglass Solar Inc. and Gestamp Solar Steel US Inc. purchased 18 acres and 27 acres, respectively, in the master-planned industrial development west of Cactus and Dysart Roads. The sites are rail-served by BNSF.
The firms bought the land from Taylor, MI-based Masco Corp., which acquired the acreage in 2006 with plans to build a window manufacturing plant to serve the home building industry.
Rioglass Solar paid $1.74 million for its site, while Gestamp Solar Steel paid $2.61 million of its acreage. Greg White, senior vice president, and Greg Koestner of CBRE’s Phoenix office represented both buyers, while Mike Ciosek and Eric Bell of Colliers International represented Masco.
White tells GlobeSt.com that both companies looked all over the state before deciding upon Surprise, a suburb of Phoenix. “Surprise wanted to capture manufacturing jobs, and the city offered a package of incentives including infrastructure upgrades to rail and utilities that made it affordable for Rioglass and Gestamp to locate their facilities in Surprise,” he adds.
Rioglass Solar, which makes large curved reflector mirrors used in solar power stations, has already broke ground on its 130,000-square-foot facility. It will invest as much as $50 million to fit out the facility and will hire 100 people to work in it.
Meanwhile, Gestamp Solar Steel has plans to invest $45 million to build a manufacturing facility up to 600,000 square feet to produce solar steel products used in large-scale solar projects. The company expects to break ground on its plant this month.
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