Plant Will Be Built in Clark: Japan’s Sekisui Selects Site at Winchester Industrial Park

By Jim Jordan, The Lexington Herald-Leader, Ky.

Jan. 24–A Japanese company that makes film used on automotive glass will build a $43 million plant in Winchester that eventually will employ 80, state officials announced yesterday.

Sekisui S-LEC America LLC selected a 23-acre site in the Winchester Industrial Park for the new facility that it said will primarily supply car plants in the Interstate 75 corridor.

Winchester Mayor Dodd Dixon said the plant will be Sekisui’s first interlayer-acoustic film manufacturing site in North America. Sekisui makes S-LEC film at plants in Japan, Mexico, The Netherlands, China and Thailand.

“It’s exciting,” Dixon said. Sekisui will be the first company to locate in a new section of the industrial park off exit 94 of Interstate 64 a few miles east of where I-64 merges with I-75 near Lexington.

Dixon said the park contains “a healthy mix” of small and midsized companies representing various industries. Five Japanese-owned firms with a total of about 1,000 employees are now in the area, he said.

“Collectively speaking, it’s a significant part of our economy,” Dixon said.

The plant will be the 142nd Japanese-owned business in Kentucky, state officials said. Those businesses employ more than 35,000.

Sekisui said the Winchester plant’s production capacity is expected to be about 6 million units a year, beginning in the fall of 2007.

Sekisui said it selected Winchester for the plant because of its “good accessibility and labor availability.”

At least one other state competed with Kentucky for the plant.

Ohio Gov. Bob Taft said in December that his state had approved $642,741 in tax credits for Sekisui if the plant was built there. Kentucky offered up to $1.6 million in tax benefits, state officials said yesterday.

Sekisui S-LEC America is a subsidiary of Sekisui Chemical Co. Ltd., which was founded in 1947 in Osaka, Japan. The Sekisui companies now employs more than 17,000 worldwide.

Herald-Leader researcher Linda Niemi contributed to this story. Reach Jim Jordan at (859) 231-3242, 1-800-950-6397, Ext. 3242, or jjordan1@herald-leader.com [mailto:jjordan1@herald-leader.com].

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