Executives of electrification and automation giant ABB have announced plans to build a cable products factory in New Mexico that will feed utilities’ work to harden their grids.
Switzerland-headquartered ABB, which has its U.S. home base in Atlanta, will spend $40 million to add a 90,000-square-foot facility to its 40-acre campus in Albuquerque. The company also employs about 450 people there making and testing various products used in the energy sector. Plans call for the new plant to start production at some point next year and employ 55 people.
“Continuing to grow our US manufacturing operations and distribution network accelerates our ability to deliver high-demand electrical products our partners rely on to manage today’s needs and prepare for tomorrow’s energy demands,” Matthias Heilmann, president of ABB Electrification’s Installation Products division, said in a statement.
ABB’s news adds to a wave of infrastructure investments as businesses and governments across the country look to accelerate the energy transition with the help of several pieces of legislation and buckets of incentives. Two other recently announced projects center on the wind energy sector:
- CS Wind America will on April 4 officially break ground on a 900,000-square-foot expansion of its Pueblo, Colorado, turbine tower plant. The addition will add 850 jobs at the site, which today employs about 650 people, over three phases.
- Leaders of Dallas-based Arcosa Inc. this month said they will invest about $60 million to convert a former plastics plant south of Albuquerque into a wind tower facility. The company will hire about 250 people there as it looks to fill roughly $750 million worth of orders it plans to deliver by 2028.
In their statement announcing the Albuquerque expansion, ABB officials said U.S. utilities are expected to install more than 75,000 miles of underground cables by 2040. Such investments are part of a broader energy-focused capital spending wave—from both the public and private sectors—catalyzed by the Inflation Reduction Act that Goldman Sachs analysts recently estimated will total $3 trillion by 2031.
