ALBANY COUNTY — A $9 million incentive package was approved on Sept. 4 by the Albany County Industrial Development Agency for the Atlas Copco expansion in Voorheesville.

The tax breaks will help with the company’s $40 million expansion, according to a release from the Advance Albany County Alliance.

As The Enterprise reported ahead of the July 24 public hearing that the Albany County IDA held in New Scotland Town Hall, the company was seeking approximately $4.56 million in sales and property tax exemptions, a $2.94 million property tax break and $1.63 million in savings from sales and use taxes (on $20.3 million in purchases).

Atlas Copco’s expansion will create 55 new full-time jobs with an average annual salary of $70,000, according to the Advance Albany County Alliance; the expansion is also expected to create an additional 46 direct and indirect jobs in the construction trades with construction completed by the end of 2026.

The Alliance also stated that the Voorheesville facility will be the only such manufacturing plant of its scale in the United States.

The School Road facility, which is operated by Atlas Copco Comptec, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the multinational conglomerate, manufactures centrifugal compressors used in major industrial plants.

The compressors have become an essential part of the burgeoning sector of American manufacturing that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and captures and sequesters carbon, including ethanol production, cement manufacturing, and power generation. These industries are able to reduce climate-changing greenhouse gasses by capturing the carbon dioxide emissions and permanently storing it underground. 

But due to space constraints, Atlas Copco has been unable to make the larger compressors stateside, instead having to import them from its plants in Germany. 

To overcome these logistical challenges, Atlas Copco received permission from the village of Voorheesville to build a six-story addition to its current 101,000-square-foot facility.

The village’s zoning board in June approved variance requests to allow for an addition to be built 20 feet higher than the 40 feet allowed by current zoning; the height was needed for the type of cranes used in manufacturing Atlas Copco’s compressors. 

Also, the facility’s 101,000-square-foot footprint will expand by 65,000 square feet, while zoning allows only for 20,000 square feet.

The Atlas Copco application said that the company would make annual PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) payments of $211,000 for 10 years, which would be $294,000 less per year than if it made regular tax payments of $505,000 on the new project; and that the annual salaries of the new 55 full-time jobs would range between $50,000 and $115,000