Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear has announced that PTC Seamless Tube Corp., a subsidiary of PTC Group Holdings Corp., plans to invest more than $102 million to establish a manufacturing operation.
PTC's renewed focus on Hopkinsville represents a shift in the company's operations from producing more traditional mechanical tubular products toward producing seamless steel tubes for the energy industry, such as oil country tubular goods (OCTG), which include high strength tube products used in oil and gas wells and certain other industrial applications.
Another subsidiary of PTC Seamless' parent company formerly operated a manufacturing facility in Hopkinsville that produced tubular goods primarily for the automotive industry. PTC's parent company was forced to shift its manufacturing closer to its customer base, and consequently decided to close its Hopkinsville facility.
As part of this project, PTC will retrofit and expand the former Hopkinsville facility, which will ultimately include approximately 256,000 square feet of building area. The project will involve the acquisition of property adjacent to the existing site, re-working the layout of the facility and the installation of manufacturing equipment.
To encourage the investment and job creation in Hopkinsville, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA) preliminarily approved the company for tax incentives up to $12 million through the Kentucky Business Investment program. The performance-based incentive allows a company to keep a portion of its investment over the term of the agreement through corporate income tax credits and wage assessments by meeting job and investment targets.
KEDFA also approved PTC for tax benefits up to $500,000 through the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act, which allows approved companies to recoup Kentucky sales and use tax on construction costs, building fixtures, equipment used in research and development and electronic processing equipment.