The Remarks Of Speaker Sheldon Silver

Groundbreaking For The New Beech-Nut Plant

Town Of Florida Industrial Park, Florida, NY
Wednesday, May 21, 2008

{As Prepared For Delivery}

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver spoke at the groundbreaking of the new Beach-Nut plant in the Montgomery County town of Florida. Silver praised the Hero/Beech-Nut Corporation, business leaders and state and local officials for working together to continue the company’s more-than-century-old presence in Upstate New York.

It is a pleasure to be here in the beautiful Mohawk Valley.

This a great day, indeed, for the State of New York and especially for the working families of Montgomery County who have been awaiting the day when our friends and partners at Hero AG would break ground for the new North American headquarters of Hero/Beech-Nut … and for the new manufacturing facility.

How far we have come.

I remember touring this county with my former Assembly colleague, Paul Tonko, to inspect the damage following the floods of June of 2006. At Paul's urging, the Assembly provided $3.85 million to help Beech-Nut repair the flood damage and upgrade its operations.

It was clear back then, that if we wanted to keep Beech-Nut viable and competitive in the world market, we needed to do more, and it should be noted that Hero could have chosen to move Beech-Nut out of state.

Silver joined Christoph Rudolf, president and CEO of Hero/Beach-Nut in the groundbreaking for the company’s new state-of-the-art facility. The project will preserve or create nearly 500 jobs.

It is to the credit of Christoph Rudolph and to Hero AG that they chose to honor the more-than-century-old partnership that has existed between New York State and Beech-Nut.

Together, we forged a new regional partnership that included Hero/Beech-Nut, the Governor, the Legislature, local government and business leaders, Paul Engel and the Greater Capital Region Building and Construction Trades Council, and together, we reached the necessary agreements and did the necessary groundwork to ensure that the best baby food in the world will continue to be manufactured right here in Montgomery County.

In recognition of just how important Beech-Nut is to New York and to this region, state and local leaders worked together to craft a $106.5 million economic package to demonstrate our commitment.

To further demonstrate our own commitment to this project, the Assembly provided a $3 million grant to help offset the costs of constructing this new facility.

Overall, the Hero/Beech-Nut project will create 400 jobs for our highly skilled construction trades workforce, 356 manufacturing jobs will be retained, and 135 new jobs will come into this County.

More than that, the entire economic food chain of this region will be strengthened: our farms, our suppliers and processors, our wholesalers and retailers, our local restaurants and all of the small businesses that serve the working families of Montgomery County will benefit, thanks to this project and thanks to the partnership that kept this great company here.

Let me assure you that we will continue to work with this company to maximize the number of New York jobs and we will continue to work with Governor Paterson and with this strong regional partnership to attract more companies and bring more jobs into Montgomery County, into the Mohawk Valley, and throughout Upstate New York.

Once again, let me thank our partners at Hero/Beech-Nut for honoring our historic partnership.

It's great to have you here.