by Jon Styf
OPMobility will receive a $558,000 incentive grant from Tennessee toward a $3 million expansion of its Spring Hill plant, which is expected to lead to 186 new jobs in Maury County.
The France-based company was renamed OPMobility from Plastic Omnium in March. It will then have 568 employees in Tennessee and more than 200 in Spring Hill after expanding from its 18 current employees in Maury County.
OPMobility will expand its product offerings and “further support electric vehicle production lines” with the expansion, it says.
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development announced the project in late June without revealing the incentive amount.
Economists question whether economic incentives such as the TNECD FastTrack grants are necessary to recruit new businesses or have businesses expand in the state.
FastTrack grants are state grants sent to companies to help offset the costs of expanding or moving into the state with the goal of increasing the number of full-time jobs and the average wages of jobs available in an area.
Tennessee recently approved nearly $1 million FastTrack Job Training Grants for Wal-Mart Associates e-commerce fulfillment center in Lebanon and Hyla Mobile in Mount Juliet.
Tennessee also pledged $218,750 to Synergy Magnetics for its planned $5.6 million startup in Jackson County that will employ 35 people in Gainesboro. The company manufactures transformers.
TNECD now has a balance of more than $139 million in uncommitted funds for FastTrack incentives. The state reported $13.2 million in newly deobligated funds toward that balance from companies that will no longer be receiving the promised grant totals, often due to not fulfilling the promised investment or new job requirements.
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Jon Styf is an award-winning editor and reporter at The Center Square, who has worked in Illinois, Texas, Wisconsin, Florida and Michigan in local newsrooms over the past 20 years, working for Shaw Media, Hearst and several other companies.
Photo “OP Mobility Plant” by OP Mobility.
Totally agree with you, Fuming.
Let’s just throw a bunch of taxpayer money at businesses that MIGHT live up to their promises (take Ford for example) and hope that the pie in the sky predictions happen. Is this any way to run a state government? He11 no!
This is just reckless. Spring Hill has been the victim of Government-Motors failures for too long. The city, state, county wants to add another maufacturer to expand? Hell no!!! Highway 31 looks like a large dumpster site at Ultium Cells plant and nothing has changed in over a year except it gets worse.
These Fast-Track grants are a disaster and leaders and law makers ought to be ashamed of themselves. Spring Hill leaders are out of control and it’ been that way for decades. It gets worse each year. The citizens are being penalized for the city’s failures. They never learn but keep on making worse mistakes. The cost has more than doubled for utilities and city services. The city is a total nightmare.
It is no wonder that the 2025 budget ran into a big snafu. When it come to money and the city it’s a trainwreck. Why is this madness allowed to continue? City Hall, County Officials and it’s elected officials need to be put out to pasture and reponsible people must be take over. If there is a postage stamp size of land available, something will be built on it. It’s very heart breaking. Stop this insanity!!