State and local leaders joined economic development officials and employees of Howard Industries in Quitman on Friday as the manufacturing company cut the ribbon on a new 180,000-square-foot facility.

The new facility will employ about 200 people when fully operational, with about 60 employees already on board. Howard Industries is working to bring in the remaining equipment and machinery it needs, with an estimated six months or so before the plant is fully online.

Michael Howard, CEO of Howard Industries, said the Quitman plant will make amorphous cores for transformers, which are the company’s main products. The tissue-paper thin metal is a highly efficient material, he said.

“It’s a piece of steel,” he said. “It’s very thin, very fragile. It’s one mil thick. Usually 300 pounds of this goes into a transformer.”

Transformers are a crucial part of the electric grid, Howard said, and are commonly found on power poles, on the ground or in other areas. Transformers, he said, transform voltage. For example, some take the 7,000 or 14,000 volts in the power lines and convert it into the 120 volts people get when they plug into a wall socket.

“We are the largest transformer manufacturer in all of America,” he said, “And all of America, Central and South America, too.”

The amorphous core material produced in Quitman will be shipped to Laurel, where it will be used to assemble transformers for a variety of uses for use throughout the country or around the world.

Opening the Quitman facility will meet a need for Howard Industries, Howard said, but it will also set the company up for the future. A proposed ruling from the U.S. Department of Energy, which governs transformers, will set higher energy efficiency levels transformers must meet to be used, he said, which will in turn impact how those transformers are manufactured.

“What they have proposed is a pretty dramatic increase in efficiency levels,” he said. “Currently, this amorphous steel that I showed you represents about 5% to 10% of our production of our transformers in Laurel, Mississippi. If the rule passes, that would change to 90%, which would have a dramatic impact on this area.”

The rule is expected to be finalized June 1, 2024, Howard said, and, if adopted as proposed, could result in the Quitman facility seeing rapid expansion to more than 1 million square feet and up to 1,000 employees.

“With the available workforce within 45 miles, we feel like we can support that here,” he said.

Gov. Tate Reeves, who delivered the keynote remarks at Friday’s ribbon cutting, said the new facility represents millions of dollars invested in the community as well as continued economic impact on the surrounding area.

“When you employe a couple hundred people here that make good wages, that money doesn’t just stay in the 170,000-square-foot facility back here behind me,” he said. “That money goes into the community in the grocery stores, in the tire places, in the automobiles, in the hopefully new homes that will be constructed.”

The impact from the new facility will not stop at the county line either, Reeves said. Surrounding counties and businesses will also benefit from the investment in Quitman.

Reeves said the state has seen record investment and record low unemployment, and one driver behind that is the state’s people are ready to put in the work.

“Our people have shown that they are willing to show up and go to work and help individuals produce the products they need to get in the marketplace,” he said.