Edinburg's Best Online News Source Serving The Valley of South Texas Since 1993 (956) 607-6745
Santana Textiles Corporation of Brazil to build $180 million manufacturing plant in Edinburg
By DAVID A. DÍAZ
SPECIAL TO THE
EDINBURG STAR
EDINBURG TV NEWS
A South American textile company will build a $180 million denim-manufacturing plant in Edinburg, creating 800 new jobs and pumping millions of dollars into the local economy, Gov. Rick Perry and the Edinburg Economic Development Corporation announced on Wednesday, July 2.
The EEDC is the jobs-creation arm of the Edinburg City Council.
Santana Textiles Corporation of Ceara, Brazil, one of the world’s largest denim manufacturers, plans to construct – on a 23-acre site located in Edinburg’s North Industrial Park – a 300,000-square-foot plant which will turn cotton into denim fabric.
Denim is the foundation of a huge worldwide industry that produces billions of dollars annually in affordable, comfortable clothes, such as long skirts, jackets, shirts, and – most famously – blue jeans, a staple fashion with deep roots in this nation’s history.
The first phase of the sprawling plant, which will be built in three stages, is slated to open in 2010.
When the three phases are completed in 2014, the foreign-owned enterprise, which will include a treatment plant, will eventually encompass about 400,000-square-feet of manufacturing space.
The EEDC, which owns the Edinburg North Industrial Park, located north of the city along U.S. Expressway 281, is donating the property, and has been working on making key infrastructure improvements in order to ready the site.
The manufacturing plant, which will utilize high-technology equipment for converting cotton into the finished product through spinning, weaving, and dyeing, also will bring high-paying jobs to the region, averaging more than $26,500 annually.
The announcement was made by the governor, who was joined by state and local leaders, during a news conference held in the International Trade and Technology Building, located at the University of Texas-Pan American.
With Perry at the public event were Mayor Joe Ochoa, who serves on the five-member EEDC Board of Directors; former Mayor Richard García, who serves as president of the EEDC Board of Directors; Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas, III; Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen; Raimundo Delfino, president of the company; and his son, Raimundo “Neto” Delfino, Jr., the company’s general manager.
Also in attendance were Edinburg Mayor Pro Tem Gene Espinoza; Councilmember Alma Garza; Councilmember Noé Garza; Ramiro Garza, EEDC Executive Director; Dr. Glenn A. Martínez, Ph.D. and Elias Longoria, Jr., members of the EEDC Board of Directors; Rep. Ryan Guillen, D-Rio Grande City; Rep. Armando “Mando” Martínez, D-Weslaco; Rep. Aaron Peña, Jr., D-Edinburg; and Rep. Verónica Gonzáles, D-McAllen.
Gonzáles is being challenged in the November general election by fellow McAllen attorney Javier Villalobos, a Republican, for the House 41 legislative seat that includes southwest Edinburg.
Alma Garza, Noé Garza, and Ramiro Garza are not related.
Governor: No where but Texas
The governor reassured the Delfino family that they could not have made a better choice than Texas to expand their operations.
“I’m kind of like this denim thing the way I was about Toyota and their pick-up trucks,” Perry said, referring to his successful venture in early 2003 that helped bring a Tundra truck manufacturing plant to San Antonio. “If you are going to manufacture a pick-up truck, where else are you going to build it except in Texas? Now, if you are going to process and produce denim, where else are you going to do it except in a place where they wear more denim than anywhere else in the world?”
The Edinburg plant will be Santana Textiles’ first presence in the United States. The company has industrial plants in Brazil and Argentina, and offices in Mexico.
“Santana Textiles’ decision to open its first North American plant in Texas speaks volumes for our state’s attractive business climate and the incentive package we were able to provide through the Texas Enterprise Fund,” Perry added.
The company selected Edinburg after a competitive search throughout locations in North and South America. They chose Edinburg because of the state and local incentives, as well as the city’s proximity to cotton growers, said “Neto” Delfino.
“After evaluating all the sites, we decided that Edinburg offered all the right conditions to expand our denim manufacturing operations in the U.S.,” he added. “We couldn’t find a better partner than the State of Texas and the City of Edinburg.”
Perry is providing a $1.65 million incentive to the company through the Texas Enterprise Fund, a special state fund that he controls.
This is the first project in South Texas to receive money from the TEF, which was created in 2003 to attract new businesses to the Lone Star State.
The governor, crediting South Texas legislators in attendance for helping authorize the creation and continuation of the TEF, said area residents will feel the positive impact of the plant’s location in more ways than one.
“It’s not just about jobs and wealth creation, its about quality of life,” Perry predicted. “In this case, there are going to be people in the Valley who will have access to really good jobs, and they in turn will be able to alter things for their families that they could never do before.”
Mayor Ochoa: Make things happen
Ochoa said the community’s can-do attitude was shared by Perry, describing how the deal quickly developed.
Referring to Perry as his friend, the mayor recalled a conversation he shared with the governor during the state leader’s visit earlier this year to Edinburg.
The governor flew down to participate in a public ceremony, held at Cats Stadium, where he posthumously bestowed the Texas Legislative Medal of Honor upon Alfredo “Freddy” González, a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who was killed in action in Vietnam, and to honor his mother, Dolia González.
“As early as February, when (Perry) was here honoring one of our great heroes, (Congressional Medal of Honor recepient) Freddy Gonzáles, as he and I were walking up to the stadium, we started to discuss how to form partnerships between Edinburg and the state of Texas to help more manufacturers come to this area. And he asked me, ‘What do we have to do to make it happen?’,” Ochoa recalled.
The mayor said Edinburg officials worked with the governor and his staff to convince the Brazilian firm to expand in Edinburg – its first venture into the prized U.S. mainland.
“Today, with the governor’s vision, he doesn’t sit in his office and wait for things to happen. He goes out and makes things happen,” Ochoa said. “That’s the way the City of Edinburg works. We go out and not only work with our neighbors in the Valley and in Texas, but we go south, to Mexico and South America.”
García, who along with Ochoa were singled-out for praise by Perry, said the city’s physical presence in northern Mexico helped pave the way for securing the manufacturing plant.
The EEDC recruited the company through their satellite office in Monterrey, said García.
“This will most assuredly attract worldwide attention to Edinburg as a location to consider by other entities seeking to make similar investment in our booming area,” García said. “It gives credibility to the EEDC office we established in Monterrey, and the manager of that office, Guillermo Canedo, who introduced us to the people from Santana Textiles. We were very proactive in setting up that office four years ago, and this project is the fruit of that initiative.”
Former Mayor García: “That’s how big it is.”
In addition to remarks delivered from the podium by Perry, Ochoa, and García, other city leaders offered their perspectives on the big news.
EEDC board member Martínez, an associate professor in Modern Languages and Literatures at UT-Pan American, noted that the local university is doing its part to cultivate academic and cultural environments needed to recruit and keep companies from throughout the world.
“This is a manifestation of some of the efforts of UT-Pan American and its internationalization initiative,” said he said. “What we are doing here is educating students to be the future leaders of the Rio Grande Valley, the future leaders of the Valley, and to understand different cultures and different languages.”
He is confident UT-Pan American is exposing students to the rest of the world, including disciplines that familiarize students with Brazil and its dominant language, Portuguese.”We are, for instance, now developing courses and programs in Portuguese, which ties in directly with what is going on here today,” Martínez said. “We hope that the university and the education we are providing can be the foundation for this type of economic development for South Texas. We provide education for the workforce, we provide cultural and human capital for their families.”
Fellow EEDC board member Longoria, an expert in banking and finances, said the announcement represents the latest positive message being sent about Edinburg as a growing center of commerce.
“Business leaders throughout the state and nation are seeing someone who is willing to make that type of investment in our community, that says something about us,” Longoria observed. “They could have picked anywhere in the world, in the country, in the Valley to build this major manufacturing plant, but they came to Edinburg. Other people will be interested, they will want to know more about Edinburg and Texas, and they will want to come here.”
Councilmember Noé Garza said the move elevates the city to a higher level on the business and political map.
“The most important thing is they realize that Edinburg, in particular, is a very progressive city, we are moving forward to compete in a global economy. That’s what they see in Edinburg. That’s why they are coming down,” Garza said.
He said he agreed with Perry’s assessment that Santana Textiles Corporation’s move to Edinburg is a “pivotal” event for the local and regional economies.
“This will bring other firms who have hesitated before. Now, they know that it can be done, and they will be coming down,” Garza said. “This is just a start – in the very near future, there will be other major announcements coming for Edinburg. For the longest time, people have looked at McAllen as the place to be, but Edinburg is the place to be, both now and in the future.”
García, who along with Ochoa and EEDC executive director Ramiro Garza played key roles in landing the plant, told reporters that the manufacturing facility is indeed a big deal, similar to the development of the city’s medical corridor, the continuing expansion of UT-Pan American, and the city’s successful efforts to keep the unemployment rate at historic lows.
“Here’s an example of how big the company is,” García told the Rio Grande Guardian, one of Texas’ top Internet newspapers. “A week-and-a-half before we flew down to Brazil, the company opened a plant outside of Buenos Aires and the president of Argentina attended. That’s how big it is.”
(Letty Reyes, Project Manager for the Edinburg Economic Development Corporation, contributed to this article.)
••••••
