Navistar to Open Plant in Alabama
The new Huntsville facility would produce a new line of diesel engines and create about 600 jobs, company spokesman Roy Wiley said.
Chicago-based Navistar, the world's fourth-largest truckmaker, still needs the state of Alabama to approve an incentives package but hopes to begin production of the engines in 2001, Wiley said.
Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman said Navistar's decision to bring its plant to Huntsville is "more than hundreds of jobs, it is hundreds of families who will be given the chance to succeed and give their families something better."
Navistar plans to purchase a plant owned by another manufacturer and refit it so that diesel engines can be built, Wiley said.
The Indiana Department of Commerce announced Friday that Navistar is expanding the Indianapolis plant because of increasing demand for its Green Diesel Technology engines for Ford and engines for the company's International brand of trucks and buses.
Wiley said he did not know how many engines the Indianapolis plant would produce over the 1,300 it now makes each day.
Navistar in the last few years has aggressively reorganized its truck and engine-making businesses and instituted cost-cutting measures to compete effectively.
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