CHESAPEAKE — In a win for the nascent Hampton Roads offshore wind industry, a South Korean company plans to build a $681 million manufacturing facility — with a massive 660-foot-tall tower — for undersea cables in Chesapeake.
LS Greenlink USA, a subsidiary of South Korean-based LS Cable & System, plans to construct a 750,000-square-foot manufacturing plant on 100 acres of Chesapeake brownfield, a move that is expected to create more than 330 full-time jobs.
“Fifteen states were in the mix, and Virginia won,” said Virginia Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick at a Tuesday event in Chesapeake.
The massive facility will be located at the Chesapeake Deep Water Terminal, located at 1213 Victory Blvd. The site, which straddles Portsmouth and Chesapeake, has railway access and sits adjacent to the Southern Branch Elizabeth River.
When constructed, the facility will be the tallest building in Virginia, said LS Greenlink USA Managing Director Patrick Shim. The Westin Virginia Beach Town Center, at 508 feet, is currently the tallest building in the commonwealth. He said the company plans to begin construction in the first quarter of 2025 and begin operating the facility in the first quarter of 2028.
Shim said the large towers are needed due to how the submarine cables are made, with gravity helping to center the core of the cable. He said the structure would be visible from all over the region.
“It’s not just a working building, but it’s going to be a landmark,” Shim said. “So we do want to make it very beautiful.”
LS has a yearslong backlog of orders due to demand, Shim said, and the cables would be used in projects all over the world.
The company chose Chesapeake due to the region’s workforce, including its veteran population.
“At the end of the day, a factory without workers is just a room with a bunch of machines,” Shim said.
The announcement is a win for proponents of the region’s offshore wind industry, who have long hoped a Dominion Energy wind farm would lure other companies in the offshore wind supply chain to Hampton Roads.
Doug Smith, Hampton Roads Alliance president and CEO, said the announcement was a huge validation for the region’s economic development work. He said the move could lead to other offshore wind supply chain companies moving to the area.
“The offshore wind industry is new,” Smith said. “So everybody is watching what everyone else is doing.”
In addition to ongoing contruction of the 176-turbine Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, Dominion announced Monday had acquired the lease for the Kitty Hawk North offshore wind project from Avangrid for $160 million. Federal regulators have scheduled the next round of offshore wind lease sales in the mid-Atlantic for August, including the lease for another area off Virginia, about 35 nautical miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.
During the event, government officials were presented with a cross section of the cables, which measured several inches in diameter and included a copper conductor core and several other layers. Even at just a couple inches in thickness, the cross section had considerable weight.
As far as jobs, Shim said the company would be hiring for advanced manufacturing positions like engineers and machine operators. He said the company plans to pay workers well above the industry average for the region.
To offset costs of the project, the U.S. Department of Energy approved $100 million in federal tax credits from a program created by President Joe Biden’s 2022 infrastructure law that incentivizes clean energy projects.
To attract the project, Youngkin approved a $13.2 million grant from the Commonwealth’s Opportunity Fund to assist the Chesapeake with this project.
Trevor Metcalfe, 757-222-5345, trevor.metcalfe@pilotonline.com
