ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 15, 1996 TAG: 9605150074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FINCASTLE
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
Botetourt County's geared-up economic development efforts paid off again Tuesday with the announcement that a Japanese maker of automobile transmission parts will locate its first American plant there.
Word that Hokkaido, Japan-based Dynax Corp. is coming to Botetourt is the third major industrial announcement in the county in six weeks, and the second in six days. Gov. George Allen, who is currently in Japan on a trade mission, actually made the announcement first at about 2 a.m. Tuesday Eastern time, or about 4 p.m. Tuesday in Tokyo.
Dynax, which currently employs only five people in the United States in a Detroit sales office, will build a $17 million 150,000-square-foot plant in Botetourt's EastPark Commerce Center. The plant will open with about 50 employees, though the company hopes to employ as many as 100 skilled workers and invest an additional $10 million within several years.
Workers will earn about $13 an hour manufacturing wet friction clutch plates for use in the United States and Europe.
The plant is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 1997.
Dynax chose Botetourt because of its proximity to the company's customers, the largest of which is a Ford Motor Co. plant in Michigan. That may still seem like some distance from Virginia, but one company official pointed out it's not nearly as far from here as from Japan.
Dynax spent eight months choosing a site for the plant. It considered two sites in the Roanoke Valley among its three finalists - EastPark and Roanoke County's Valley TechPark.
"That hardly ever happens to us," said Beth Doughty, executive director of the Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership. Doughty said the only other time a company looked seriously at two sites in this area was when Transkrit made its move here.
Doughty said Dynax first came to the area in July to look at the industrial shell building in EastPark that York International Corp. announced it would purchase last week.
The shell building didn't fit Dynax's needs, Doughty said, so the partnership quickly turned the visit into an opportunity for Dynax to consider two other locations.
Roanoke County fell out of the running when it decided to give the remaining 90 acres in its Valley TechPark to printing company R.R. Donnelley & Sons.
Botetourt County, meanwhile, has no shortage of developable land. The 16-acre site Dynax will build on exhausts the available land in EastPark, but County Administrator Jerry Burgess said the county has purchased an additional 17 acres that will soon become part of EastPark. Two sites adjoining the A.O. Smith plant in the county's Vista Corporate Park are still available, not to mention the proposed Greenfield Center at Botetourt, which includes about 600 acres for industrial development.
The board of supervisors will vote on the Greenfield rezoning May 21.
"We're not closing up," Burgess said.
The county gave Dynax the $92,000 site in EastPark plus $200,000 for site improvements. Burgess said the county will recoup that investment in just over two years. Dynax will also benefit from training funds from the Virginia Department of Economic Development.
The Dynax acquisition marks the arrival of the first Japanese company in Botetourt County. It's also a major expansion for Dynax, which employs only 285 workers in two Japanese plants and its Detroit office.
Since it was founded in 1973, Dynax has grown to be the largest supplier of clutches to Japanese automakers, with 60 percent of the market. Dynax opened its Detroit office in 1991, and now has about 5 percent of the U.S. market.
Last year, Dynax posted sales of $150 million. The company would not provide information on profits.
Dynax is not a public company, but is owned by Exedy Corp., which is traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Exedy, formerly Daikin Manufacturing, has about 48 million shares of outstanding common stock.
Dynax is the third auto parts maker to come to Botetourt County in the last year or so. The others are A.O. Smith and Meadville Forging Co. Doughty said that's because Virginia is centrally located between existing northern automotive plants and the growing southern market in Kentucky and Tennessee.
Dynax will move in next to York International Corp.
York, an air conditioning and refrigeration manufacturer, announced last week that it will invest $12 million to $15 million in an air compressor plant in the county's shell building and employ up to 160 people.
The York announcement came on the heels of word that Meadville Forging would invest $35 million in a wheel-bearing plant in Buchanan.
Dynax will break ground on its plant next Wednesday at 2 p.m.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Chart and map by staff. color.by CNB