Northeast Florida

ECONOMIC LIFE

Aviation & Defense

• Flightstar Aircraft Services has added a third hangar and a 52,000-sq.-ft. climate controlled parts and tooling distribution center at Cecil Airport.
• Since partnering with German pipe manufacturer KME Marine Tube, Jacksonville-based Nuflo Inc., a manufacturer of specialty pipe fittings for military aircraft carriers and submarines, has invested $4 million in construction of a 50,000-sq.-ft. pipe mill and plans two more 50,000-sq.-ft. expansions as business dictates.
• Ballistic protection equipment maker Defenshield has moved its headquarters from Syracuse, N.Y., to St. Augustine. The firm’s customers include the U.S. military, law enforcement and municipalities.

Financial/Business Services

• Mortgage loan servicing firm Selene Finance plans to expand its Jacksonville operations by 105 jobs and make a $500,000 capital investment in IT equipment, furniture and other items.
• General Dynamics Information Technology, a business unit of industrial giant General Dynamics, will open an operations center in Jacksonville and hire 100 employees to provide IT, systems engineering and other professional services to private- and public-sector firms.
• In a deal with Dell Computer, U2 Cloud is growing its business from eight employees to 80. After two years of negotiation, Dell agreed to market and resell U2 Cloud’s unique data backup package to its customers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

Healthcare

• UF Health opened the first phase of a six-story outpatient medical complex — UF Health North — in February 2015 with an emergency room, radiology department and outpatient surgical suites.
• Baptist Health has entered into partnership with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and will open the Baptist MD Anderson Cancer Center in fall 2015. Baptist is the third hospital to join the Anderson Cancer Center Network; similar facilities are located in Arizona and New Jersey.
• Wolfson Children’s Hospital is ranked among the top 50 hospitals in two pediatric specialties according to U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Children’s Hospitals 2015-16”: gastroenterology and neurology/neurosurgery.
• Family-owned Beutlich Pharmaceuticals has relocated from Waukegan, Ill., to a 20,000-sq.-ft. warehouse in Bunnell; up to 30 new employees are anticipated.

Logistics/Distribution

• Nestle USA will shift a majority of its U.S.-to-Puerto-Rico shipments from the Port of New York and New Jersey to JaxPort with the anticipation of growing its volume to Puerto Rico at least 400%.
• Ireland-based Greencore Group, a supplier of convenience foods to the American market, has opened its southern hub in Jacksonville to service clients in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. In 2014, Greencore delivered 108,000 items a week to 1,300 stores.

Manufacturing

• Building Component Supply, manufacturer of roof and floor trusses, wall panels and other engineered products, has opened in Green Cove Springs; 50 jobs antcipated.
• The Safariland Group, a global provider of safety and survivability products, plans to invest $1 million in facility and equipment upgrades and add 30 new jobs at its two Jacksonville sites.
• Knoxville, Tenn.-based Sea Ray Boats will add 160 positions at its Palm Coast plant, bringing the facility’s workforce to approximately 540.
• Georgia-Pacific is investing close to $90 million in improvements at its Pulp and Paper Operations in Palatka. Approximately $70 million will go toward equipment modernization; the rest will be used to install product quality improvement equipment in the mill’s kraft paper area.

QUALITY OF LIFE

Crowd appeal People just love to come to Jacksonville. The North American Soccer League’s Jacksonville Armada began play in spring 2015 before a record crowd of 16,000-plus; One Spark, the highly successful crowdfunding festival now in its third year, lured more than 320,000 to downtown Jacksonville over six days in April 2015; the annual Florida Country Superfest brings upwards of 80,000 music fans each June; and, in October, one of college sports’ biggest rivalries, the annual Florida-Georgia Football Classic, draws close to 50,000.

The perfect playground With some 85 courses throughout the region, golf is always in season in Northeast Florida, but never more so than in May. That’s when the best of the best (and their fans) congregate at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra for one of this sport’s signature events, THE PLAYERS Championship PGA tournament.

Plenty more to see and do Catch the annual Jacksonville Jazz Festival (2nd largest in the U.S.), Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens, Museum of Science and History and Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens. For history, there’s the Victorian seaport village of Fernandina Beach, the Civil War battlefield at Olustee and, of course, St. Augustine, which in 2015 is celebrating the 450th anniversary of its founding. And coming soon: the St. Augustine Aquarium.

Tags: Business Florida