Energy company announces $22.5M expansion in Southwest Virginia

I continue to be mystified at what should be good-news announcements about industry expansions, just because, how can anybody plan to invest millions in a business environment where we literally don’t know from one minute to the next what the idiot president is going to do to undermine everything?

“Hitachi Energy’s investment in the new Atkins facility and the transformative modernization of the Bland plant is a powerful endorsement of Virginia’s manufacturing capabilities,” said our head-in-the-sand MAGA governor, Glenn Youngkin, in a press release touting the planned $22.5 million expansion involving the aforementioned Hitachi Energy, which provides electrical grid infrastructure to customers in the utility, industry, transportation, data center and infrastructure sectors.

The investment will expand Hitachi Energy’s facility in Bland, described in the governor’s office news release as “the country’s leading source of dry-type transformers,” and to add a warehouse facility in Atkins that will handle core cutting and warehousing work.

The expansion will create 120 new jobs.

Which, great, but you have to wonder, don’t you, how, for example, the dramatic decline in freight coming in at ports of call will impact not only what we can and can’t find on store shelves, but what companies are able to get delivered, and at what costs, when they’re trying to undertake upgrades?

The indications in the here and now are for a disruption in our supply chain akin to what we saw during the COVID pandemic.

The difference here: the damage is self-inflicted.

I’m rooting for Hitachi Energy, which is based in Switzerland, and employs 450 people in Southwest Virginia, where it has been in business since 1972.

“Virginia has been an essential part of our manufacturing story for over 50 years, and this expansion reflects our confidence in the region’s skilled workforce and strong support for innovation. This investment reflects Hitachi Energy’s broader commitment to strengthening local manufacturing in the U.S.,” said Steve McKinney, a senior vice president at Hitachi Energy.