St. CLOUD, Minn. — New Flyer of America Inc. plans to invest $28 million in a new parts fabrication facility in Shepherdsville, Ken., south of Louisville.
The 300,000-square-foot facility will fabricate parts for the manufacture of New Flyer transit buses and Motor Coach Industries motorcoaches, as well as spare parts.
Production is expected to begin during the second quarter of 2018 and, once fully operational by December 2019, the facility expects to employ up to 550 people.
“As we continue with our goal of designing, manufacturing and supporting the industry’s best transit buses and motorcoaches, we believe that owning and control of the fabrication of key parts of our supply chain (where we own the drawings and the intellectual property) are fundamental to our competitiveness and controlling overall cost, time and quality,” said Paul Soubry, president and CEO of New Flyer Industries Group, parent company of New Flyer of America and MCI.
“This new facility will build on our successful metal fabrication insourcing efforts over the past number of years, and most recently, our efforts to consolidate our fiberglass reinforced plastic supply,” Soubry said. “Once fully operational the return on invested capital is expected to be accretive to the company’s current performance levels.”
The new facility, located in Bullitt County, will be supported by tax incentives through the Kentucky Business Investment program. New Flyer will also receive resources from the Kentucky Skills Network.
Wayne Joseph, president of New Flyer of America, said the company chose the Kentucky location “due to its available workforce, lower operating costs and central location relative to NFI Group’s other U.S. manufacturing plants.”
The Shepherdsville facility will also provide additional U.S. content to assist in complying with the increased Buy America requirements under the 2015 FAST Act.
