VOORHEESVILLE — Atlas Copco’s recent $323,000 payment to the Albany County Industrial Development Agency signaled a formal “closeout” of the project. 

The announcement was made by Albany County’s economic development chief during the July meeting of the county IDA, when Kevin O’Connor told attendees the closeout was formally “funded” with the receipt of Atlas Copco’s administrative fee earlier this month. 

This transaction is tied to a necessary legal step whereby Atlas Copco temporarily gives up legal ownership of its property to the IDA, which in turn leases the land back to the company in exchange for substantial tax savings. The arrangement is a typical development-agency transaction.

The deal nets Atlas Copco a little under $2 million in tax benefits. 

The project was put on hold in March because of the “election back in November,” O’Connor said during the June meeting of the county IDA, alluding to Donald Trump’s presidency, which he said was followed by the company’s desire “to see how things shaped out.”

The time allowed Atlas Copco to cut “back on some ancillary things,” O’Connor said, which lowered the project cost from $40 million to $32 million. 

With costs shrinking, the company’s sales-tax exemption was adjusted from $1,625,625 to $1,375,000, with the real-property-tax exemption decreased from $734,000 to $670,000 — the property tax abatement, $21,000 per $1 million of  assessed value, is spread out over 10 years. The company’s annual Payment In Lieu Of Taxes (PILOT) over that time will be $221,550.

The downward revision also affected a grant the company received as part of Albany County’s Sustainable Technology and Green Energy (STAGE) program, which went from $500,000 to $475,000. 

The company is also eligible to receive back 30 percent of the project’s total cost. This is because of tax credits through the federal Department of Energy, made possible by passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

Decarbonization

The expansion of its School Road manufacturing facility will allow Atlas Copco to fill a void in the decarbonization marketplace. 

The company’s compressors are used in the carbon-capture and sequestration (CSS) processes employed by American industries such as ethanol production, cement manufacturing, and power generation. With CSS, these industries are able to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gasses by capturing the carbon dioxide emissions and permanently storing it underground. 

But the growth of the CCS industry has been hampered by a lack of domestic manufacturing capacity, particularly when it comes to the type of large-scale compressors made by Atlas Copco.

“In the decarbonization, carbon capture, and carbon sequestration markets, these are brand new. They didn’t exist 10 years ago. They didn’t really exist five years ago except in some pilot plants. Now it’s a full-blown industry across the heartlands where ethanol was made," Randy Dirlam, Atlas Copco’s Voorheesville general manager, told members of the village planning commission in April of last year.

To meet this demand, the company needed to build a facility not allowed by village code. 

The village zoning board in June 2024 approved a variance to allow for an addition to the existing building to be built 20 feet higher than the 40 feet allowed by zoning. The facility’s 101,000-square-foot footprint will expand by 50,000 square feet, where zoning allows only for 20,000 square feet.

Costs

The breakdown of $32,835,000 in costs includes:

— Buildings: $24,500,000;

— Machinery and equipment costs: $7,715,000;

— Utilities, roads, and accessory costs: $270,000; and

— Architects and engineering fees: $350,000.

Per the company’s IDA application, Atlas Copco incurred another $291,000 in costs due to advanced engineering and environmental studies.

The project saw reductions from:

— The acquisition and installation of solar panels being delayed, resulting in an approximate $2 million reduction;

— The equipment budget being reduced from $11.1 million to $7.7 million due to a reduction in overhead cranes; and 

— Not updating office spaces, $2 million. 

The project, according to Atlas Copco’s IDA application, will add 55 full-time positions with a salary range between $50,000 and $115,000.

There are currently 248 full-time employees on School Road, 35 of which would have been “lost without this because of competitive pressures,” according to O’Connor.