MORE: Montgomery County OKs incentives for 400+ jobs
“This is a company that needed to grow, and after taking a look at the landscape, decided its best option was to grow here in Vandalia,” said Amber Holloway, Vandalia assistant city manager.
The project applied for a Montgomery County incentive this spring using the code name "Project Zeppelin." was awarded a $210,000 Montgomery County Economic Development/Government Equity grant this spring.
“These incentives were a great way to propel this company to stay here in the city of Vandalia and expand right here,” Holloway said.
General Manager Neil Thiesing said the city and county have been supportive and helped the company grow.
“We’ve gotten some grants, some tax abatements, things like this that help us to make a nice story to our headquarters in Germany and say ‘Hey, we’ve got a city and we’ve got a county that are supportive and want to help us grow,’” Thiesing said.
Thiesing said they plan to add at least 25 people and are creating high paying jobs.
“We see a good boost to the local economy and the region and it’s an exciting time,” he said.
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Holloway said the new positions that the company will add are high paying and highly technical positions that will pay about $95,000 a year.
Heraeus is a family-owned company based in Hanau, Germany, that dates back to 1851. Heraeus’ portfolio includes businesses in the environmental, energy, electronics, health, mobility and industrial applications sectors and the company reported $20.3 billion in revenue in 2018 and 15,000 employees.
The Vandalia location is listed as part of a Heraeus business line that supplies advanced chemicals to the electronics, display and aerospace industries.
Heraeus Epurio President Bernd Stenger was in town for the ground breaking and said the Vandalia location was an existing business acquired by Heraeus in 2012 and was a good fit with their electronic chemicals business.
Stenger said a lot of their materials are in high demand and used in a range of products, such as microchips.
“We are running out of capacity, so now we want to expand to go to the next level,” Stenger said.
Heraeus Epurio was among a series of businesses awarded incentives from Montgomery County this spring. In all, the projects represent more than 400 new jobs.
Another proposed Vandalia project also received an incentive from the county that same funding round. The company applied confidentially under the code name “Project Ocean” and had wanted to create 25 new jobs. A Vandalia spokesman said that company later decided not to move forward with the project.
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