Teaming Up To Pave the Way for Your Major Manufacturing Project
When Pennsylvania-based Giorgi Global Holdings Inc. (GGH) — a holding company with operations in the agricultural, food, and packaging sectors — needed a one-stop shop for government relations and legal assistance in connection with plans for CANPACK, its foreign subsidiary, to build its first factory in the United States, the company turned to Cozen O’Connor.
A multidisciplinary team, including members of Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies as well as the law firm’s Real Estate and Environmental practices, set to work. The team’s efforts helped CANPACK secure from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and local governmental authorities more than $10 million in incentives to build a new aluminum can factory in Olyphant, Pa. This high-exposure project was described by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf as the largest manufacturing project in the greater Scranton area since Procter & Gamble built its factory there in 1966. CANPACK plans to invest more than $366 million in the brownfield industrial site, where an abandoned compact disk factory currently sits, and the new factory will create more than 400 jobs in the area.
“Cozen O’Connor’s combination of government relations professionals and attorneys in various disciplines working shoulder-to-shoulder was invaluable in getting this deal done,” said Michael Rettig, global general counsel and chief compliance officer of GGH. Jim Davis led the team’s efforts on the government relations and lobbying front, Christopher Preate took the lead on the land acquisition issues attendant to the deal, and Peter Fontaine secured the necessary environmental permits. “We are extremely pleased with the Cozen O’Connor team’s work on this extremely important project for GGH and for CANPACK,” Rettig concluded.