St. Petersburg, Florida-based Jabil has picked Salisbury for a $264 million investment that is expected to create 1,181 manufacturing jobs over the next five years.
The move follows an agreement for state incentives Monday totaling $18.8 million, plus an additional $2.3 million in incentives from Rowan County.
The Fortune 500 company also considering another site in Florida, according to the state’s Economic Investment Committee. Florida offered tax credits and incentives, utility and workforce training incentives.
North Carolina’s package includes an $11.2 million Job Development Investment Grant in addition to incentives worth about $7.5 million from the community college system and workforce training. Jabil told North Carolina that its incentives would be critical to its choosing the Tar Heel state.
The new jobs would pay an annual average salary of $62,034, about 15% higher than the current average annual salary of $53,931 in Rowan County. Jabil would plan to start hiring in 2026 and complete its investment by Dec. 31, 2030.
The new facility would manufacture hardware needed to power AI workflows and data centers. Jabil already has 991 employees in North Carolina working in healthcare and packaging in the cities of Asheville, Hendersonville and Mebane. It has more than 140,000 workers globally, with more than half of those workers in Asia. It has 100 facilities in 25 countries, including China, Singapore and Mexico. It has about 48,000 U.S. employees.
Jabil reported net revenue of $28.9 billion and net income of $1.4 billion in its fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 2024. Jabil closed Friday at $217.37 after doubling in value over the past year. It has a market capitalization of $23.3 billion.
The company name, Jabil, is a combination of the first names of its founders, James Golden and Bill Morean. They started the business in Detroit, then moved the headquarters to Florida in 1982. A third of the shares are now controlled by Fidelity, Vanguard and BlackRock, which have major stakes in many U.S. public companies.