Knoxville Chamber executive Doug Lawyer is in Kitakyushu, Japan this week to market Innovation Valley and seek out business opportunities for Knoxville area companies.
So far, he’s been briefed on Kitakyushu’s solar R&D efforts and met with the city’s industrial development team.
Lawyer, the chamber’s vice president of economic development, is blogging about what he sees and hears.
Knoxville is in the running for a company that could potentially invest $1 billion and create thousands of new jobs, Knoxville Chamber Chairman Michael Strickland said Thursday.
The chamber is competing “right now for a huge company with huge federal funding that is
looking at us, Virginia and Texas,” Strickland said in remarks at the chamber’s annual meeting at Cafe 4 on Market Square.
Initially the unidentified company could employ 1,000 workers and in five to 10 years the company has the potential for 5,000 to 10,000 workers, Strickland said.
Cornell Dubilier Foil’s reopening of the former Panasonic aluminum foil plant in Forks of the River Industrial Park continues a run of good news coming out of the park.
Several other plants at the East Knox County park have seen significant investment or otherwise done well in the last couple of years, including Melaleuca, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, PSC Metals and House Hasson, says Doug Lawyer, director of economic development for the Knoxville Chamber.