Petersen Inc., Janicki Industries receive incentives from Utah economic board

SALT LAKE CITY — A pair of companies will add jobs in Utah after receiving economic development incentives Thursday from the Governor's Office of Economic Development Board.

While the job-creation levels are relatively small by GOED incentive standards, the approvals allow Petersen Inc. and Janicki Industries Inc. to expand into or further increase their involvement in prominent industries.

The board approved a five-year tax credit of up to $344,209 for Petersen, a steel fabrication and machining company, to expand manufacturing operations in Farr West, Weber County.

The company will add 53 jobs over the next two years as it begins to manufacture fuel assemblies that contain fuel rods and build canisters to store spent nuclear fuel for out-of-state nuclear facilities. Petersen has a combined 420 employees in a 580,000-square-foot facility in Ogden and a 204,000-square-foot facility in Pocatello, Idaho.

The internal facility expansion will feature more than $2.5 million in capital improvements.

The incentive is based on the average base salary for the new jobs paying at least 25 percent above the Weber County average. The project is expected to produce more than $10.6 million in new state wages over five years and more than $900,000 in new state revenue during the same period.

The incentive is the first awarded under a new alternative energy incentive program approved by the Legislature in 2009.

"It's going to help our company. It's going to help our local community," Mark Jenkins, the company's chief financial officer, told the board. "It's going to help put Utah on the map, quite frankly. This is a very exciting business we're in right now, with this nuclear aspect of energy."

The Janicki incentive is in the form of a 10-year tax credit of up to $316,275. The company, based in Sedro-Woolley, Wash., will establish a new $19.5 million composites manufacturing facility in Utah — board documents mention Layton — to support the F-35 joint strike fighter program.

In 2001, Lockheed Martin was selected as the F-35 program's prime contractor, and Janicki has been awarded contracts in the F-35's development phase since 2002. The new facility will employ about 50 people working to help Janicki fulfill its contractual obligations to Alliant Techsystems and Hitco Carbon Composites.