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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowGE Aviation plans to invest $92 million and create 200 jobs at a jet-engine manufacturing plant in Lafayette—its first production facility in Indiana and one that could expand to add hundreds of additional workers.
The jobs will pay an average of $36 per hour, or about $75,000 per year. The state's incentive deal includes $3.3 million in conditional Economic Development for a Growing Economy, or EDGE, tax credits; an industrial development grant of up to $1.35 million; and $332,000 in training grants.
Details of the company's plans emerged at a Tuesday morning board meeting of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. Gov. Mike Pence and GE Aviation CEO David Joyce are scheduled to make an official announcement at Purdue University Airport on Wednesday.
IEDC Board Member Robert N. "Bob" Taylor called the project an "early phase of what could be more to come." The facility will build GE Aviation's next-generation Leading Edge Aviation Propulsion, or LEAP engine, of which the company already has orders for 6,000.
GE Aviation, based outside Cincinnati, is the world's largest jet engine maker and a unit of Connecticut-based General Electric Co.
The company employs more than 40,000 people and recorded 2013 revenue of $21.9 billion. It is one of three companies that dominate jet-engine manufacturing globally.
The others are Connecticut-based Pratt & Whitney and London-based Rolls-Royce, which employs more than 4,000 people in Indianapolis.
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