A Belgian manufacturer of buses, coaches, and industrial vehicles recently announced it will build a bus factory in Morristown, Tennessee. This will be Van Hool’s first production facility in the United States although its vehicles have been on the streets of North America since 1987. The plant is expected to produce state of the art buses and commuter coaches under the “Buy America Act”, which requires vehicles supplied to public authorities that are assembled in the U.S. to contain 70 percent of their parts from American suppliers and 100 percent American steel.
“We are excited to announce the next step of the Van Hool group’s global growth plans here in Morristown, Hamblen County, Tennessee. The investment of more than $47 million confirms the more than 30-year presence of Van Hool on the American market. Today we are looking forward to building a state-of-the-art bus factory in Morristown to provide the entire North American market with high-quality buses and commuter coaches for transportation agencies from 2020 onwards,” said Filip Van Hool, CEO at Van Hool.
Once the facility is operational in the first quarter of 2020, Van Hool will employ 600 and manufacture around 400 buses and commuter coaches annually for the North American public transport market. The groundbreaking ceremony for the new site will take place at the end of summer 2018.
Present at the announcement in Morristown, Tennessee, were Bill Haslam, Governor of Tennessee, and Bob Rolfe, Commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD).
