Kobelco Construction Machinery USA recently celebrated the grand opening of its new excavator manufacturing plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Announced early last year, the $41 million, 85-acre site will produce 1,800 excavators each year. It’s the second U.S. facility for Kobelco USA which opened its Katy, Texas, corporate headquarters in 2014.
The Spartanburg site was chosen from nearly 50 candidate sites across eight states and includes a 156,000 square foot production plant, 17,000 sq. ft. office building and plenty of room for future expansion.
“Within three years, we’ve moved into a new US headquarters, parts distribution warehouse in Katy, Texas and built a manufacturing facility that is now fully operational,” Pete Morita, President and CEO of Kobelco USA, said at the event. “Kobelco is poised in the North American market and this facility further solidifies our commitment to producing excavators that are built like no other excavators in the industry.”
Driving the opening of the new U.S.-based facility are Kobelco’s hopes to achieve 10 percent market share here in the U.S. Plus, the company’s Hiroshima Itsukaichi factory in Japan, which produced the company’s excavators marketed here, has been working at full capacity for some time.
The Spartanburg facility was modeled after the facility in Hiroshima.
