Building Alabama is a weekly column by Yellowhammer News on the projects, industries and investments shaping Alabama’s economy.
Virginia Transformer’s Muscle Shoals plant will bring 1,100 jobs to Northwest Alabama. But the bigger story is where it lands the state: dead center in one of the country’s most critical infrastructure bottlenecks.
Governor Kay Ivey announced last month that the Roanoke-based company, the largest power transformer manufacturer in North America, will build a 600,000-square-foot plant at the Shoals Research Airpark in Colbert County. Construction was expected to begin immediately, with initial production expected in January 2028.
Power transformers move electricity across the grid and make it usable for homes, factories, and industrial customers. The U.S. Department of Energy has warned that transformer supply chains are under pressure, with order lead times, particularly for distribution transformers, growing from three to six months in 2019 to 12 to 30 months by 2023. Utilities, data centers, manufacturers, and grid operators are all waiting in line for the same equipment, and the bottleneck shows no sign of easing. That is the market this plant walks into.
“Virginia Transformer’s investment is another strong example of how energy and economic development go hand in hand,” said Clay Scofield, president and CEO of the Energy Institute of Alabama.
“Power transformers are critical to the energy infrastructure that supports economic growth, strengthens our electric grid and helps meet rising energy demand.”
There is also a domestic-capacity angle. The United States has spent the last several years relearning that critical infrastructure depends on physical supply chains, not just demand forecasts, financing or software. Power transformers are part of that lesson. When lead times stretch and utilities depend on limited global suppliers, domestic manufacturing capacity becomes an economic issue, an energy issue and a resilience issue at the same time.
That is why the Muscle Shoals plant fits the moment. It adds production capacity in a category where the country needs more redundancy, more suppliers and shorter paths between demand and delivery.
The project fits a pattern Alabama has been building for years: complex physical products tied to long-term national needs. Power transformers require capital, skilled labor, supplier networks, transportation access and staying power. Alabama already makes cars, rockets, missiles, ships, steel and aerospace components. A major transformer plant adds another line to that industrial identity. These are long-cycle, capital-intensive sectors that matter to national economic strength, and Alabama keeps stacking them.
Earlier in May, Ivey announced about $4.5 million for site work and public infrastructure at Shoals Research Airpark through the Growing Alabama Tax Credit program, which incentivizes private investment to improve publicly owned sites for economic development.
Virginia Transformer’s plant will sit on about 90 acres inside that park, and the site includes a dedicated Norfolk Southern rail spur for shipping and supply chain access. That is economic development before the announcement. Prepared land, rail and a workforce made the pitch before the company ever went public.
Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair made the point plainly, saying Alabama offered Virginia Transformer “the right combination of infrastructure, capable workforce and community partners” to make the expansion work.
A plant this size can also bring its own supply chain. Transformer manufacturing runs on electrical steel, copper, insulation materials, fabricated steel for the enclosures, and specialized components like bushings and cooling systems. That kind of operation can create demand for nearby suppliers, logistics providers and industrial sites, especially if Alabama continues preparing places where those companies can land.
That is where the state’s site-readiness work matters.
Growing Alabama helped support the Shoals Research Airpark site before Virginia Transformer’s announcement, and the new Alabama Development Fund is built around the idea of preparing communities for growth through a variety of efforts, including site preparation and rural assistance programs.
For the Shoals, this is a major jobs win. For Alabama, the story runs deeper. The state’s energy opportunity now extends beyond generating power to building the grid everyone else will need, and Virginia Transformer’s Muscle Shoals plant is a strong early answer.
Sawyer Knowles is a state and political reporter for Yellowhammer News. You can email him at [email protected].
