In a column for Forbes, Dale Buss highlights Alabama’s automotive manufacturing industry and the state’s pro-jobs climate, calling the state “an automotive force to be reckoned with.”
“As a center of automotive-manufacturing expansion, few places are humming like Alabama,” Buss said, opening his writeup, adding that Alabama is “the car-making capital of the American South.”
Buss outlined the industry’s rise in the state, starting with Mercedes-Benz in 1993 and then boosted by Hyundai, which began building vehicles in Montgomery in 2005.
“Over the last 20 years, Alabama’s auto sector has risen from a smudge to the fifth-largest state for auto manufacturing, now employing more than 40,000 residents, and it’s expected to continue to rise. Hyundai has led a bevy of foreign automakers in betting big on the state, a list that also includes Honda and Mercedes-Benz, and will also include the construction of a new plant by Toyota and Mazda,” Buss explained.
According to the Forbes columnist, it is not just big-name consumer brands boosting Alabama’s automotive manufacturing sector, either. There is a booming faction of supplier companies, as well as lesser-known commercial and industrial brands, such as Autocar, a maker of heavy trucks that just finished building an assembly plant in Birmingham this year.
“They’re a very vehicle-friendly state,” Andrew Taitz, chairman of the GVW Group that owns the Autocar brand, said. “There’s a lot of auto production in the state, and therefore a lot of support infrastructure. And the state has been very supportive, helping us to set up a million-square-foot facility in record time.”
Besides its pro-growth climate, Alabama’s focus on workforce development raises the Yellowhammer State’s automotive industry to its elite level. Buss had nothing but praise for the state’s “massive training infrastructure that ensures Alabama can supply the continued boom in demand for workers” in these skilled jobs.
Governor Kay Ivey is building on the state’s manufacturing prowess while ensuring the state trains qualified workers for a diverse portfolio of sectors requiring high-skilled, high-paying jobs with her “Success Plus” initiative that aims to increase the number of skilled workers in the state by 500,000 by the year 2025.
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
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