CHEMICALS

Flint group plant opens

Luxembourg-based chemical firm Flint Group has a new Atlanta, Georgia, facility that it hopes will provide faster turnaround time for customers, convenient and controlled product testing, and streamlined distribution and warehousing. The 5000-square-metre site will accommodate solvent, water and paste manufacturing. The site includes space to eventually expand the company’s testing capabilities to include a large customer service laboratory with a printing press for on-site product development.

FOOD& TOBACCO

Expansion for Nestlé

Nestlé Prepared Foods Company plans to spend more than $60m on expanding its frozen foods manufacturing facility in Jonesboro, Arkansas. The expansion will include a production line and a new bakery for pizza production for both its Stouffers and Lean Cuisine brands. The expansion will create up to 200 new jobs.

METALS

Alcoa boosts tonnage

US aluminium producer Alcoa is investing $1.2bn in its Canadian Baie Comeau facility in a technology upgrade to its foundry, which is expected to increase production volumes to 548,000 tonnes per year (an increase of 110,000 tonnes per year) by 2015. The new technologies that will be located on the site will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases by 40%. The group intends to eventually double its production capacity at the site to 570,000 tonnes per year.

Rio aims to double ore

Mining giant Rio Tinto has announced a $475m project to double the Iron Ore Company (IOC) of Canada’s annual production capacity of iron ore concentrate to 22 million tonnes by 2012. The investment is the first phase of an IOC expansion programme which will commence immediately to expand mining and processing facilities in Labrador West and increase transportation capacity on its 418-kilometre railway to its port facilities in Sept-Îles, Quebec.

AUTOMATIVE

$750m and 500 jobs from BMW

Germany’s BMW is investing $750m in its US operations, in a manufacturing project that will create 500 jobs by 2012. Production capacity for the site in Spartanburg, South Carolina, is expected to reach 240,000 vehicles per year.

GM invests in Brazil

General Motors is to build a $200m engine and parts plant in Joinville City, Brazil. The 60,000-square-metre factory will employ 500 people and generate another 1300 related jobs. GM says the plant should start producing engines in the fourth quarter of 2009 and will have production capacity for 120,000 engines and 50,000 turbines a year.

_{This investment news and data has been generated by fDi Markets, a crossborder investment tracking service that is part of Financial Times Ltd'sfDi Intelligence division.}

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AMERICAS FDI, 2007 (NUMBER OF PROJECTS):

_{Source: fDi Intelligence}

AMERICAS FDI, 2007 (NUMBER OF JOBS):

Source: fDi Intelligence