Georgia Governor Nathan Deal arrived to Bainbridge Wednesday morning and officially announced and welcomed Bainbridge Manufacturing to the state.
Bainbridge Manufacturing, a company that will manufacture heat exchange systems for the aerospace, automotive and HVAC industry officially signed on to locate in Bainbridge in August 2013. Since, the company has announced it has plans to create 240 jobs, invest more than $10 million in 2014, expand its current facility to 1.6 million feet and work to create an internship program for students.
Deal spoke to a crowd of local officials and press at Bainbridge State College and said the arrival of Bainbridge Manufacturing to Georgia means more than just job creation.
“With the coming of this company it is going to be a further affirmation of that Georgia is indeed the best state to do business,” Deal said. “It is a further affirmation that Georgia is a good place, and growing place, for the manufacturers of products in the automotive industry and aeronautics. So we are a good place for those people especially.”
Deal encouraged the students of Bainbridge State College in attendance to consider their contribution to Bainbridge Manufacturing. Deal told the students to “show people when they come to Georgia why that was a good decision.”
“We want to affirm their decision by producing the products they ask us to,” Deal said. “Just do simple things — when you go to work, have a good attitude about it.”
Deal said he made job creation in Georgia the top priority for his administration because someone who has a good job can provide for themselves, their family, they can be charitable in their community and they have less reason to ask government to do things for them because they can do it for themselves.
Bainbridge Manufacturing CEO Abraham Levy told those who gathered Wednesday he had great faith in the Bainbridge community and the region provided great resources and had great potential.
“People ask me how many jobs we are going to create and I look at it from a different perspective,” Levy said. “I look at it as what kind of opportunities we are going to create to enrich people’s lives.”
Levy told the story of how he became interested in the manufacturing industry after working in his family business his entire life. He said he visited a GE plant and had an experience that changed his life. After seeing people create things, watching them make products, he was so inspired he went back to college and studied engineering.
“The journey to find a plant location began four years ago and my family and I traveled through Asia, Central America, South America and all over the United States to look for a place to establish our plant,” Levy said. “We went to so many different states and heard economic development officials repeat the same thing and after a while it started to sound like a broken record.”
Levy said he believes, though he was not born in the United States, that the American people are blessed with the mind to create and innovate.
“No country can out compete us or out innovate us,” Levy said. “I believe in manufacturing and I believe we can do it better here in the United States and that’s what I want to do.”
The Bainbridge Manufacturing motto is “Build Here. Grow Here.”
Levy said you can combine the great potential for Americans to create and innovate with the business-friendly climate in the state of Georgia and you have a formula for success.