New plant for AMP Corp

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fairfield_meeting000001Expecting to create many high-paying jobs, AMP Corporation is annexing property into the city of Columbiana from Fairfield Township. According to the Morning Journal, Corporation consultants working with the yet-to-be disclosed parent company in charge of a new plant to be constructed on the annexed property along Cherry Fork Road explained to the city’s planning commission last week that the company will be melting a combination of scrap and “virgin” metal under a vacuum furnace.

AMP is a corporation created by the investors behind the project, and AMP consultant Dennis McAndrew said the process does not require many environmental permits. “Our permit needs are fairly modest. The air and water emissions from the site are not unlike a typical manufacturing operation,” he said.

Greg Seifert, an architect for Geis Construction, explained the manufacturing process that will take place in one of the two planned buildings located on roughly 90 acres of the total 183 acres the company is annexing. A warehouse and office space will also be constructed on the property which will feature city utilities yet to be extended to the site. “Raw material will be brought into what we call Building A, which is a melting operation … it will be melted and cast under a vacuum in a variety of different forms. The reason it is done under a vacuum is if the metal is exposed to oxygen it is ruined. You can’t make quality metal if you did it in an open way like you do in the steel and aluminum industry,” he said.

The melting operation produces no emissions, he added, noting the company will not refine the metal, but cast already existing metal that has been melted down. The finished metal products will be used in the international marketplace for primarily aerospace, automotive, power generation, chemical process and medical applications industries.