When North Carolina recently beat out South Carolina for a 428-job two-county expansion by Corning Incorporated, it was just the latest example of the specialty materials manufacturer or its optical fiber subsidiary choosing to grow in the Tar Heel state.
Corning Incorporated’s expansion in Edgecombe and Durham counties, announced in December 2017, will support its newly introduced glass packaging for pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile, growing global demand for digital data, video, and voice is fueling separate expansions by subsidiary Corning Optical Communications, which manufactures optical fiber cable.
New York-based Corning is a signature and growing employer in the state – in both urban and rural counties. So the 2018 North Carolina Economic Development Guide, published by Business North Carolina magazine and supported by the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, takes a closer look at Corning’s history here and why the company has been choosing North Carolina over other states aggressively vying for Corning’s corporate expansions.
In February 2017, for example, Corning Incorporated and Corning Optical announced they would add 410 jobs in Catawba and Cabarrus counties. In 2016, Corning Optical launched a 205-job expansion in Catawba and Forsyth counties. The year before, Corning Optical announced a new 150-job corporate headquarters in Mecklenburg County.
In “Geared for Growth,” the Corning case study in the 2018 North Carolina Economic Development Guide, New York-based company spokesman Joe Dunning discusses the ongoing expansion of Corning’s already large footprint in the state. The company’s plants in North Carolina include “two of the world’s largest fiber-manufacturing facilities in Concord and Wilmington and two of the world’s largest fiber-cabling facilities in Winston-Salem and Hickory,” he says.
Dunning singles out the state’s educational system for praise, saying North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte are “critical to helping inspire our future workforce.”
In addition, North Carolina’s 58-school community college system “in particular has been and continues to be a strong partner to Corning for job training and retraining,” he says.
