David Brown, a British-based firm offering industrial gearing solutions and services, plans to invest up to $4.7 million to open and operate a service, repair and assembly facility, in Inez, Kentucky.

"We're pleased to welcome David Brown to Inez, and we look forward to the company's job growth in the near future as a result of this partnership," said Gov. Steve Beshear. "David Brown is a company with a 150-year heritage, and that is a testament to its longevity and proven record of success."

The company's Kentucky facility, in the Honey Branch Industrial Park, will assemble large gear boxes, as well as refurbish and rebuild manufactured components. It will provide on-site technical services for the mining and oil and gas industries, as well as conventional power generation, steel, cement and chemical processing industries and the renewable energy sector throughout North America.

"At David Brown, we strive to be as close to our customers as possible," said Marcelo Zapatero, David Brown's regional sales director for the Americas. "Our main aim is simply to increase our customer's up time and reliability by being right on the ground in the region. This way we can respond exceptionally quickly with swap-outs, spares, improvements and advice. We are delighted to be here in Kentucky and are looking forward to serving our customers with a local team of specialists. We have had a lot of support from the Kentucky and Martin County Economic Development teams to make this happen, and are looking forward to continuing our collaboration with them."

As an incentive to encourage the investment and job creation in Inez, the Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority preliminarily approved the company for tax incentives up to $2 million through the Kentucky Business Investment program. The performance-based incentive allows a company to keep a portion of its investment over the term of the agreement through corporate income tax credits and wage assessments by meeting job and investment targets.

"It is exciting when a new company comes to our county, especially in a time when many people are looking for work," said Inez Mayor Terry Fraley. "I commend the economic development officials for all their hard work, and look forward to a growing partnership with David Brown."

"I am very excited to have this new engineering group locate within our Big Sandy Regional Industrial Park as this will be a great addition to our Community and will provide much needed manufacturing and engineering jobs for this area," said James H. Booth, chairperson of the Martin County Economic Development Authority.