DECATUR — United Launch Alliance (ULA), which houses the world’s largest rocket plant, is expanding its operations in rural North Alabama.
ULA held a Thursday ground-breaking ceremony for the company’s new warehouse and an additional factory facility. The expansion will allow ULA to nearly double its launch rate, according to company officials.
The new buildings will serve to support ULA’s contract with Amazon for Project Kuiper, an ambitious global broadband connectivity effort aimed at providing high-speed internet services to underserved areas around the world.
SEE: United Launch Alliance, Amazon unite for global broadband satellite project
Beyond Gravity, a major supplier to ULA, will provide 38 payload fairings for the Vulcan rocket which will be utilized for the project. The $300 million investment will result in the creation of 200 jobs.
ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno expressed the rocket manufacturer’s gratitude for the support it had received from community leadership.
“We’re now back investing again in this community and this factory another $300 million into this place, that’s the start of it over there in that beautiful Alabama red clay,” said Bruno, while pointing to the facility’s construction site. “This is going to take us to more than two times our current launch rate, and it’s going to bring hundreds of jobs right here to Alabama, which is even more important than all the money we’ll spend.”
Calling Vulcan “a very special rocket,” Bruno said the rocket had the “flexibility” to perform the “highest energy missions our country needs.” The rocket, he said, also held the capability of being “competitive” in commercial space.
“I just want to thank this community for welcoming us here, making us feel that this is our home for all these many decades we’ve been here,” said Bruno. “I would not build this rocket anywhere else.
“We are in Alabama to stay.”
Beyond Gravity CEO Andre Wall, a native of Germany who was born in the American sector of West Berlin during the Cold War, said he felt “special emotions” in attending ULA’s ground-breaking ceremony.
“There are some special emotions from my side being here, giving something back and contributing a small part to sustainable growth in the United States,” said Wall. “More important, to contribute to one of the strongest partnerships I’ve ever experienced in my business career.”
Madison County Commission Chairman Dale Strong, GOP nominee for Alabama’s fifth congressional district, declared there was “no finer place” to conduct aerospace manufacturing than the Tennessee Valley.
Strong also touched on the relationships regional leaders had formed which culminated in the vital production of Alabama-made products.
“We’re no longer dependent on Russia in the RD-180 engine. It’s being done with American workers right here in Morgan County, Alabama,” he said. “This Vulcan rocket is what our community needed.”
Dylan Smith is the editor of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanSmithAL
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