But the 270 employees are just the first phase of a 750-employee expansion the company is planning over the next five years, said Michael Sullivan, a spokesman for the Governor's Office of Economic Development Board, which approved the incentive offer for Fresenius in September.
Fresenius, one of Germany's largest corporations, manufactures equipment and supplies used in dialysis, a procedure that keeps people with kidney disease alive.
The company is considered by economic developers to be one of Utah's better-paying and more valuable employers, which has qualified it for several state and city-level incentives in recent years. In fact, one of the reasons why the Governor's Office of Economic Development Board (GOED) offered the company as much as $1.5 million to expand in Utah is because the company said all of the new jobs will pay more than $30,000 annually, some much more than that.
"They are a highly sought-after employer in Ogden," said David Harmer, director of Ogden's Community and Economic Development department. "They won't have any trouble filling those jobs."
The company has broken ground on its expansion and will be hiring the first 270 of the additional workers in early 2007, said company spokeswoman Pam Sparkman.
Fresenius is part of Fresenius AG of Bad Homburg. The Ogden plant is part of Fresenius Medical Care's North American operations, based in Lexington, Mass., and is responsible for producing Dialyzers, which are filters used to purify blood during dialysis treatment.
From 1996 to 2000, the company, responding to strong sales of Dialyzers, nearly doubled its employment in Ogden to about 900 people and increased its capacity fourfold to nearly 400,000 square feet. The first phase of its current expansion is set to expand employment in Ogden from about 1,300 to nearly 1,600, Sparkman said.
The state offer of as much as $1.5 million was made under the state's tax rebate program, which rebates a portion of state taxes the company pays over five years.
Fresenius, which operates numerous manufacturing facilities worldwide, "could have put this plant in any one of 10 or 12 countries," said Sullivan of GOED.
The incentive it is set to receive from Utah would not be the first for the company. Fresenius acquired a cash grant of $1.2 million from Utah's Industrial Assistance Fund about six years ago in exchange for adding 755 jobs.
lesley@sltrib.com
