IperionX — Halifax County’s newest manufacturer — is making progress on its campus along U.S. 58 and plans to open by the middle of this year.
That’s delayed slightly from its original target for the first quarter. Company officials didn’t respond to a question from The Gazette concerning the delay.
The company first announced in September 2022 it was bringing a titanium demonstration facility to Halifax County.
That facility will be located in a 50,000-square-foot building — a former shell building constructed to lure a tenant — in the Southern Virginia Technology Park on the outskirts of South Boston, and IperionX has plans ultimately to expand the floor space by an extra 100,000-square-feet.
The Halifax County Industrial Development Authority approved the IDA budget for the coming year and ratified a lease agreement for the county’s Iperion X manufacturing plant on Friday.
With an otherwise light agenda for the June monthly meeting, the 2023-24 budget was the prime focus of the board discussion, with members expressing satisfaction at how the agency’s finances are shaping up in the coming fiscal year. The new budget takes effect July 1.
“It is a conservative budget, and I think [the IDA Finance Committee] put a lot of time and energy into [balancing information] from the current years and what we’ll have next year in the forecast,” said IDA treasurer Nancy Pool.
Executive Director Kristy Johnson said the budget has changed little from the current year’s package, which totals $2.3 million, but the IDA is prepared to handle any possible changes that could arise throughout the upcoming year.
On May 11, Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office announced the Southside Planning District Commission and its internet partner, EMPOWER Broadband, were awarded $8.5 million to expand its fiber network and services to an additional 4,804 addresses in portions of Brunswick, Charlotte, Greensville, Halifax and Mecklenburg counties.
This 2023 Virginia Telecommunications Initiative award represents an additional project cost of $30.23 million and includes matching funds from the counties, Dominion Energy and EMPOWER.
This award supplements the previous $154 million project to which VATI contributed $69 million in 2022. This latest grant will include additional addresses in each of the counties, including over 2,000 within Greensville County, the newest partner to this regional broadband consortium. To illustrate the impact on each of the areas, the grant adds 153 addresses to Brunswick, 73 to Charlotte, 1,943 to Halifax, 2,041 to Greensville and 589 to Mecklenburg.