February 09, 2010 GlobalFoundries construction company moving headquarters to Capital District By DREW KERR dkerr@poststar.com
The construction company that is building the GlobalFoundries computer chip factory is moving its headquarters to the Capital Region.
M & W U.S. Inc., previously based in Dallas, Texas, will relocate its operations to the Watervliet Arsenal and the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, officials said earlier today (Tuesday).
Within the next 18 months, around 250 employees will work at the company's new offices, Rick Whitney, M & W's chief executive said in a brief interview this morning.
Around 70 employees are already working for the construction firm in the region, and another 60 employees presently employed in Dallas were offered new positions in New York on Monday, Whitney said.
"This is new news to them as well and we've offered them the ability to move, so we'll wait and see what positions we need to fill locally," he said.
The move was made in keeping with M & W's "corporate philosophy of being near our clients," said Whitney, who also moved to Saratoga Springs last year to be close to the GlobalFoundries construction site.
"When you look around the country and where the investments are being made, it's the upstate New York area and in the Tech Valley," he said.
The GlobalFoundries project in Saratoga County - as well as the support businesses expected to follow - is bound to produce more work for the construction firm in the coming years, Whitney said.
"These facilities don't usually come as single entities, and we believe there will be additional investment both in Albany and in Saratoga County," he said.
M & W will invest more than $200 million in its New York operations over the next five years in equipment, an expanded training facility and office as part of the move.
The majority of that investment will be made at the Watervliet Arsenal in Watervliet, where M & W already has some operations.
State officials have also offered the company a $6.5 million grant for moving to New York.
M & W U.S. is a subsidiary of M & W Group, previously known as M & W Zander.
The company is the general contractor behind the GlobalFoundries computer chip factory at the Luther Forest Technology Campus, and has also built chip factories for Advanced Micro Devices in Dresden, Germany.
