Japan’s Toppan Printing Co. is to invest $100 million in a new factory in Griffin, becoming the second Japanese manufacturer in two months to announce plans to invest in a new eco-friendly industrial park.
Toppan’s main business is printing, but the new 127,000-square-foot Georgia operation will focus on transparent barrier film used mainly in the packaging of food products.
The new operation is separate from Toppan Interamerica, a sister company with a factory in nearby McDonough that makes large roles of patterned paper used as veneer for floor coverings, according to a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Economic Development.
In other words, the 80 new jobs in Griffin are to be truly new jobs, not moved from the existing plant, which is run by a separate Toppan subsidiary. Toppan Cosmo officials were traveling overseas and could not be immediately reached for comment.
The Toppan announcement comes on the heels of Otsuka Chemical Co.’s decision to put a 32-job factory in The Lakes at Green Valley, a park jointly developed by the Griffin-Spalding County Industrial Development Authority and Georgia Institute of Technology.
Industrial land is only part of the 570-acre park, with 12 industrial sites encompassing a maximum of 2.5 million square feet set aside on 360 acres.
Plans also call for a 43-acre hotel and conference center, a 15-acre retail center and 30 acres of dedicated green space anchored by an existing cabin overlooking a lake that will be converted to a nature center.
All buildings within the park will have to get LEED certification in sustainable design, and special water filtration systems will be put in place to minimize sediment loss, according to the development authority’s website. Read more about Toppan Cosmo in this 2011 report on Japanese investment in Georgia.
