Virginia has lost out in recent months when major companies have opted to put manufacturing plants in other states, where the land is ready for construction and where the cost of living and doing business is lower, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin said Monday in an editorial board meeting with Bloomberg News.
(Bloomberg) — Virginia has lost out in recent months when major companies have opted to put manufacturing plants in other states, where the land is ready for construction and where the cost of living and doing business is lower, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin said Monday in an editorial board meeting with Bloomberg News.
“Advanced manufacturing is one of Virginia’s strong points, and we just haven’t gotten the big stuff. And the big stuff is where we lose the most because the big stuff comes from 10 years of planning in order to be ready,” Youngkin said.
“Intel is looking for a place to put their first big US manufacturing footprint, and the site that they really liked in Virginia happened to be in Chesterfield County, was at least three years, if not four years from being shovel-ready,” Youngkin said. “Nobody had done the work. No one had done the grading and gotten the permits and had utilities connected and done the transportation planning.”
That plant will be built outside of Columbus, Ohio “where they had a site they could literally start building on in six months because it was ready to go,” Youngkin said.
Similarly, he added, Hyundai Motor Co. picked a site near Savannah, Georgia, over Virginia for a new plant because the Savannah area had already invested in that location.
Youngkin, former co-chief executive officer of Carlyle Group Inc., said he would like to see Virginia do more prep work to ensure it is ready for this type of private sector investment.
Youngkin said that the CHIPS and Science Act that President Joe Biden signed last August with the intention of bolstering domestic semiconductor production provides more certainty.
“It gives us confidence that there is going to be relocation and re-domiciling of the entire supply chain in the semiconductor world. And so it gives us comfort that if we have a site that is ready that is of the right profile, that it will get used,” Youngkin said.
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