GE Power & Water is to stop manufacturing gas engines in Waukesha, Wisconsin and open a new facility to build engines in Canada. The new facility will also have back-up capacity to manufacture diesel engine components for GE Transportation. GE currently employs 350 people at its manufacturing facility in Waukesha, building gas engines for compression, mechanical drive and power generation applications.
GE plans to build a US$ 265 million state-of-the-art facility that it has dubbed "Brilliant Factory" It is is expected to be completed in 20 months and will be a flexible production facility that can expand over time and also support manufacturing requirements for other GE businesses.
GE's decision to build in Canada is in order to gain access to additional support from the country's export credit agency, Export Development Canada (EDC), with which it has a long-standing relationship through a number of global transactions. While more than 60 other countries have export credit agencies that support domestic manufacturing for export, the USA no longer does. The authorisation for the U.S. export credit agency - the Export-Import Bank, or Ex-Im - lapsed on July 1. GE is currently bidding on $11 billion of projects that require export financing.
GE fully expects to expand its relationship with EDC in support of the company's Power & Water, Oil & Gas and Transportation businesses. In 2014, EDC facilitated exports and investments of approximately $100 bn CDN. The agency actively supports global expansion for manufacturers based in Canada, supporting over 7000 customers in close to 200 countries last year.
"We believe in American manufacturing, but our customers in many cases require ECA financing for us to bid on projects. Without it, we cannot compete and our customers may be forced to select other providers. We know these announcements will have regrettable impact not only on our employees but on the hundreds of US suppliers we work with that cannot move their facilities, but we cannot walk away from our customers," said GE vice chairman John Rice.
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