GREENVILLE, Pa. – George Bulick opens the door to a mostly empty manufacturing space. Leftover machinery and equipment sit inside, each piece affixed with a number.
These components are slated for auction, as the building’s former tenant, PennTecQ, sells off its remaining wares to make room for an entirely new venture – one that could ultimately result in a total investment of $100 million and hundreds of jobs over the next 10 years.
Bulick, president of Advanced Power & Energy, says his company is planning to move its manufacturing
operations into the approximately 130,000-square-foot plant at the Reynolds North Business Park in Greenville, Pa.
“We definitely will be filling this with panel builders,” Bulick says. Should the huge plant be built out to capacity, it could ultimately mean another 600 jobs.
Advanced Power & Energy has acquired the building and is in the process of wrapping up some final details to move in soon. The goal is to eventually manufacture nickel-zinc batteries here and onshore operations from China, he adds.
The company’s project is among the latest to take hold at Greenville-Reynolds Development Corp.’s business parks just off Pennsylvania Route 18. PennTecQ, a manufacturer that produced trims and other components for the automotive industry, ceased operations toward the end of December.
The building wasn’t vacant long, says Brad Gosser, executive director of Greenville-Reynolds Development. “In Mercer County, the building inventory is a little bit tight,” he says, and the PennTecQ facility proved a perfect fit for Advanced Power’s future operations.
Attracting the Business
Greenville-Reynolds owns three business parks – the Reynolds Industrial Park, the Reynolds East Business Park and the Reynolds North Business Park. Together, the properties total more than 1,100 acres and accommodate manufacturers, distributors, contractors and a host of other companies. “There are a lot of things going on,” Gosser says.
The key to attracting new business to the park is the development of newer, modern buildings that fit the needs of today’s manufacturers. Greenville-Reynolds is wrapping up construction on a 4,800-square-foot “spec” building, which Gosser says is perfect for a small business.
“There’s a need for those,” he says.
Future development calls for the construction of an 80,000-square-foot building, also on spec, to accommodate companies in search of modern facilities.
So far, the strategy has worked, Gosser says. A larger spec building, constructed in 2018, is leased and a second one just 100 yards away is available, which is likely to be occupied soon. Moreover, these buildings are constructed with expansion in mind, he says.
“We always try to build for expandability,” he says.
Other companies in the parks, such as Greenville Metals, Arrow Electric, McCulloch Grain, RBS Holdings, and Salem Tube Corp., have regularly reinvested in their operations. Today, the parks are home to more than 50 businesses that employ more than 1,600, Gosser says.
The first business park was opened in 1951 at the former Camp Reynolds, a U.S. Army site that served as a personnel depot during World War II. During the war years, more than one million troops passed through on their way to the European theater.
While the business parks have grown, they’ve also been hit with the same economic turbulence as other areas of the country, as companies have come and gone. The most high-profile project through Greenville-Reynolds Corp. is the former Damascus-Bishop Steel site, which sits front and center near the entrance of the Reynolds Industrial Park.
Redevelopment of the site is now well within reach, Gosser says.
In July, Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that the project was awarded $942,900 in funding from the commonwealth’s Business in Our Sites program. The package includes a $385,160 grant and a low-interest loan of $577,740.
“Greenville-Reynolds Development Corp. has a great track record of providing a home for both new and existing businesses,” state Rep. Parke Wentling, R-Mercer, said in a statement announcing the grant. “They’ve already invested heavily in the former Damascus-Bishop Tube site, and this additional funding will help to reestablish this space as a gateway into the industrial park.”
“The history on this project dates to 2013,” Gosser says. Damascus shut its doors in 2002, and the building deteriorated and eventually became a rusting eyesore at the gates of the property. In 2013, the development corporation secured $2 million from the state’s Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program. Three years later, it demolished the crumbling factory and eventually cleaned the site. The pandemic placed the project on hold, but Gosser says the latest funding plus the remainder of the previous grant has reinvigorated the effort.
“Ideally, my hope is that we can have this completed by year-end 2025,” he says. The 32-acre site would be marketed as clean space; the most visible portion near Route 18 occupies some 15 acres and could accommodate a 62,000-square-foot building, he says. Preferably, Gosser would like to sell the land and have the buyer construct its own facility.
“Our goal is to put a premier building there because it’s a gateway coming into the industrial park,” he says. “If we don’t sell it, we’ll put up a spec building somewhere between 16,000 and 62,000 square feet, depending upon what kind of assistance money we can get to help leverage it.”
Gosser says it’s important to spend money up front to complete site design and then, if necessary, construct a building. “Even though we might build a smaller building, it’s already permitted to do a build-out,” he says.
Building the Future
For Greenville-Reynolds, luring a new occupant such as Advance Power solidifies the park as an important catalyst for economic growth in Mercer County, Gosser says.
Advanced Power’s Bulick agrees. He says his operation needs the space because of tight constraints at its offices and plant a mile north on state Route 18. The company has partnered with Cleveland-based Millennium Control Systems and manufactures electrical panel cabinets for major clients such as Google and Meta.
However, the growth potential for Advanced Power is through a business line separate from its Millennium cabinets – an innovative technology partnership with ZincFive, Bulick says.
These batteries are strictly nickel and zinc in nature, providing an alternative to lithium-based batteries that require raw materials that are difficult to source. The batteries are used for data centers, energy backup and storage, Bulick says.
The company was established in August 2023, and by October, Advanced Power had received ample private investment that helped to secure an additional $500,000 grant from The Mercer County Innovation Fund and Ben Franklin Technology Partners. The company also has applied for a U.S. Department of Energy grant to help it begin operations at the PennTecQ site.
Advanced Power’s plan calls for Portland, Ore.-based ZincFive to relocate its operations from China to the Greenville location, Bulick says, where advanced power would manufacture its batteries.
As such, the project has applied to the federal government for $40 million in funding, he says, on top of the $60 million in private funding it has already secured.
“It’s $100 million total,” he says. “We’re already funded. We’re just waiting for the feds for the kick-in.” Bulick says the company should know soon if it was awarded the federal grant.
“That would be what would drive this facility to its full capacity,” he says. “We’d manufacture batteries that are now being manufactured in China.”
Advanced Power currently employs 34, Bulick says. “We’d get to 60 by the end of this year,” he says. Within three years, he expects the plant to employ approximately 300. “With a full, complete facility, we’d be at about 600.”
Much of the private funding has come from ZincFive, Bulick says. But additional investment was tendered by Greenville native Mike Yurisic, who founded the company.
Bulick says the standard zinc-nickel battery intended for production at the plant is similar in shape and size to a normal “C” battery that would fit in a flashlight.
Together, these units are interconnected to form a single cell. These cells are integrated into a pack approximately the same size as a vehicle battery.
The batteries are then installed inside a tall cabinet that provides backup power for Advanced Energy’s customers.
Tyler Small, Advanced Power’s product development engineer, says the company has formed a strong relationship with Brite Energy Innovators, the energy industry incubator based in Warren.
“It’s fantastic. We’re fully utilizing the energy lab,” Small says. “We’re using batteries for anything that needs pulses of power or more long-term power.”
Initially, Bulick says the PennTecQ plant will be used to manufacture control panels. But as the battery side of the business grows and additional employees are needed, that operation will occupy the site, with the control-panel business relocated to another building at one of the Greenville-Reynolds business parks, he says.
Bulick adds that Advanced Power is engaged in the electric vehicle charging market and has products designed for that industry. EV charging stations, for example, sit in front of the company’s headquarters – the former Greenville Motors building along Route 18.
“We’ve got a good five- to 10-year plan,” Bulick says. “But we’re good for the next three to five years even if the federal funding doesn’t come through.”
Pictured at top: Mike Yurisic, founder of Advanced Power & Energy, and George Bulick, president, plan to move manufacturing operations to the Reynolds North Business Park in Greenville, Pa.