U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Haleyville) called Friday’s ribbon-cutting of Hadrian’s Factory 4 in Cherokee the culmination of years of work to bring economic opportunity back to a part of the state he said had been left behind.
“I grew up less than an hour from here,” Aderholt told the crowd at the 2.2-million-square-foot facility. “There’s so many parts of this state and our country that sometimes got left behind. But this is really going to be the factory of the future.”
The facility, located at the Barton Riverfront Industrial Park in Aderholt’s 4th Congressional District, will produce components for the Navy’s Columbia- and Virginia-class submarine programs.
The project represents a $2.4 billion public-private partnership between Hadrian and the U.S. Navy.
The site was formerly home to FreightCar America, which closed its operations and moved production to Mexico in 2021.
Aderholt said the transformation of the dormant industrial site into a defense manufacturing hub was deliberate and long in the making.
“This project didn’t happen by accident,” Aderholt said. “It happened because people believed in this community and because we made a deliberate effort to bring opportunities back to places that had long been overlooked.”
Before continuing with the ceremony, Aderholt asked the crowd to join him in a moment of silence for Major John “Alex” Kleiner, a 33-year-old husband, father, and Auburn graduate from Trussville, Alabama, who was killed during Operation Epic Fury in the Middle East.
“Their sacrifice is a reminder that what we’re doing here today matters and has a real impact here at home and literally around the world,” Aderholt said.
Speaking to reporters after the ceremony, Aderholt said the facility will offer jobs paying north of $70,000 a year.
He pointed to three factors that made the Shoals region attractive for the project: energy available at reasonable rates through the Tennessee Valley Authority, inland water access via the Tennessee River, and the local workforce.
“This is just the beginning,” Aderholt said. “We’re all going to make sure that we work to see this coming to fruition. We’ll be coming back for more ribbon cuttings and more groundbreakings.”
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Saks) framed the project within a broader national push to rebuild America’s defense industrial capacity after what he described as a dangerous period of underinvestment.
“Our nation, going into last summer, was at the lowest level of defense spending as a percentage of GDP that it had been in since before World War II,” Rogers said.
Rogers said he and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) met with President Trump to urge raising defense spending to 5% of GDP, which Trump agreed to do.
“You’re at the beginning of a process that’s going to be very emphatic and fast paced, with a lot of energy from the administration to get behind it,” Rogers said. “We need to get more partners doing exactly what Hadrian is doing here today. We need to get more people in the defense industrial base making the things that keep us free and safe.”
Rogers reminded the crowd that American industrial strength was decisive in the 20th century’s defining conflicts.
“When you look at World War II and the Cold War, the way we won both of those wars was through our industrial strength,” Rogers said. “That’s the way we’re going to retake our peace through strength status.”
The facility is expected to create more than 1,000 jobs and reach full production capacity within 24 months.
Sawyer Knowles is a capitol reporter for Yellowhammer News. You may contact him at [email protected].
