Issue link: https://alabamapower.uberflip.com/i/792573
12 Alabama's ability to aract the world's leading automotive and aerospace companies comes from the state's reputation for diverse groups pulling together to go the extra mile for business and industry. Alabama Power's swi work last year to help major automotive supplier Kamtek out of a jam was a prime example. The bigger story is how the company and a host of local governments work as a team, in this case to facilitate what is poised to become a major industrial presence between Tarrant and Pinson. "Ultimately, it is our goal to create a manufacturing campus here in north Birmingham that will rival any elsewhere in the United States," said Jason Gibson, controller at Kamtek. That's what economic developers like to hear. "Expansion of existing industry is where real growth is generated," said Patrick Murphy, vice president of Economic Development for Alabama Power, who was the company's point man on the project and whose relationship with Kamtek began when he was senior vice president for the Birmingham Business Alliance. The recent episode with Kamtek emerged last spring. With more than 900 employees at Valley East Industrial Park, Kamtek was about to open an $80 million, 148,000-square-foot aluminum die-casting line to manufacture parts for suspensions made by Mercedes in Vance and BMW in South Carolina. State Commerce Department Secretary Greg Canfield called Kamtek's expansion "one of the largest and most significant by an auto supplier in Alabama." At the 11th hour, Kamtek found it had a new customer deadline forcing it to open the aluminum casting line two weeks early. That meant hooking up electricity early. "Our timeline changed and we needed to get from temporary to production power on very short notice," said Rick Zimmerman, Kamtek's assistant general manager of the casting facility. "With threatening weather and other circumstances, geing it done with very lile notice seemed out of our control," recalled Chris Haynes, a project manager with Alabama Power's Marketing Contracts and Project Management department. WORKERS BEAT CRUCIAL DEADLINE TO HELP KAMTEK • BY GILBERT NICHOLSON ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Crews arriving outside Kamtek building in Birmingham.