$1B Manufacturing Plant Planned in Tennessee
Highland Materials intends to develop the project within a former nuclear power plant campus.
Pivotal Manufacturing Partners has purchased nearly 140 acres of land in Hawkins County, Tenn., within Phipps Bend Advanced Nuclear Plant. Concurrently, the real estate investment platform executed a long-term ground lease with polysilicon manufacturer Highland Materials, which plans to pour more than $1 billion into the development of an advanced manufacturing facility on a portion of the site.
Other development partners include the Tennessee Valley Authority, Hawkins County, Holston Electric Cooperative and the State of Tennessee.
Highland Materials chose the Phipps Bend campus due to its power infrastructure and strategic location that can support a large-scale manufacturing project. The upcoming facility is set to total 1.2 million square feet and will be used for purified silicon and aluminum master alloy manufacturing. Highland Materials’ project is expected to create more than 400 high-paying manufacturing jobs in the area.
READ ALSO: Why Memphis Industrial is Booming: A Builder’s View
The campus, dubbed Phipps Bend Advanced Manufacturing & Technology Campus, is planned as a high-power, heavy infrastructure location designed for mission critical operators. The campus has direct access to a major Tennessee Valley Authority-owned regional transmission interconnection, as well as Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia’s primary regional power distribution hub. Additionally, the campus benefits from a nuclear and industrial overlay and a development-friendly permitting environment with flexible zoning.
Originally developed by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the late 1970s as a nuclear power facility, the site saw more than $2.6 billion in federal investment, but the project got canceled in the early 1980s following the Three Mile Island incident. Later, TVA auctioned off the land, which remained under Hawkins County’s industrial development board.
Why industrial is booming in Tennessee
Over the past few years, Tennessee has been experiencing an industrial boom. This growth has been supported by multiple state initiatives, including the Select Tennessee Certified Sites program, which was created as an industrial site certification initiative, and is meant to unveil available land and attract industrial companies.
Led by the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, the program has already attracted $4 billion in capital investment, with multiple projects currently underway. One of them is Ford Motor Co.’s BlueOval City, a project that anchors Memphis’ ongoing rapid industrial expansion.
One of the largest automotive investments in the U.S., the BlueOval City electric vehicle megacampus is a 6-square-mile site in Stanton, Tenn. Ford’s partnership with SK Innovation includes plans for an adjacent, 4.2 million-square-foot battery plant. The two initiatives represent a $11.4 billion investment.
Additionally, Canada-based Magna International is also expanding in this new manufacturing hub, with an $800 million investment in three new facilities within BlueOval City. This project is just one of the major investments transforming Memphis into an industrial hotspot. As of June, the metro was the national leader in industrial development, with 12.5 million square feet underway, according to the latest Yardi Matrix industrial report.
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