Italy-based Pietro Fiorentini USA plans to invest $9 million to build a manufacturing facility in the Three Springs Business Park in Weirton, West Virginia, with plans to create up to 41 jobs during the initial phase and up to 150 when fully operational.

Parent company Pietro Fiorentini S.p.a., based in Italy, produces pressure regulators, valves, and pressure reducing and metering systems for the natural gas industry. Although the company has a sales office and a distributorship in the U.S., the West Virginia plant will be its first manufacturing operation in the country. The new facility will produce components for the treatment of shale oil and gas.

The firm plans to lease space at the former Wheeling Corrugating Plant in Brooke County currently owned by Business Development Corporation of the Northern Panhandle and Hackman Capital based in Los Angeles to get operations under way within six months. Construction on the new manufacturing facility is expected to start this summer.

“Pietro Fiorentini group decided to invest in West Virginia after completing a feasibility study that covered several states of the nation. Our study confirmed that the Marcellus area has a large potential yet to be developed,” said Sergio Trevisan, General Manager for Pietro Fiorentini S.p.a. “And this was the main decision factor. Specifically in the Marcellus area, West Virginia offers, in our opinion, an interesting business atmosphere combined with an excellent support from the state. We are willing to be at the center of the area and West Virginia fully responded to this prerequisite. Pietro Fiorentini is setting up here a manufacturing and logistic base for gas conditioning equipment, oil and gas treatment and reducing and metering plants already distributed in more than 80 countries of the world.”

“I’m pleased Pietro Fiorentini has chosen to locate its new manufacturing plant in West Virginia,” said. Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. “I’d like to thank the West Virginia Development Office, the Business Development Corporation of the Northern Panhandle and the Independent Oil and Gas Association for working collaboratively with Pietro Fiorentini USA to bring these jobs to Brooke County.”

“Having Pietro Fiorentini build its new plant in Weirton will be the single biggest manufacturing project in the panhandle for nearly a generation,” said Patrick B. Ford, Executive Director, Business Development Corporation of the Northern Panhandle. “The investment by this company — coupled with the recent announcements in the panhandle of the investment of Sheehan Pipeline and the expansion of Ergon — clearly places Brooke and Hancock counties on the radar of the oil and gas industry."