A Dubai-based start-up company plans to build a USD 102M factory in Buffalo to manufacture steel pipes for the oil and natural gas industry. Alita USA Holdings’ factory on Rittling Boulevard would manufacture 150,000 tons of high-grade alloy pipes annually for well casings in oil and natural gas wells, primarily in the United States. Plans call for Alita to build a 340,000-square-foot pipe mill on a brownfield site which will also include a separate 16,000-square-foot building for a laboratory, office space and for storage.
Ali Hosseini, Alita USA’s president and CEO said the region’s location, close to the company’s suppliers of raw materials, will help hold its costs down, while the region’s workforce, with its historic ties to the steel industry, also played a big role in persuading the company to build the plant in Buffalo.
Alita on Tuesday was awarded USD 2M in funding from the Western New York Power Proceeds Allocation Board, an entity created last year to fund economic-development projects in Buffalo Niagara with money raised from the sale of unallocated hydropower from the Niagara Power Project. Alita hopes to begin manufacturing at the Buffalo plant during the summer of 2015, state officials said.