Nine months after a massive fire destroyed the SPS Technologies manufacturing plant outside Philadelphia, the company announced that it will present a plan later this month to construct a new aerospace fastener facility at the same site, PhillyVoice reports.
At a community meeting on September 25, SPS officials will unveil renderings and details about the planned factory. SPS had about 475 workers at the time of the February 17 fire, but around 250 employees were laid off in March.
The fire started after an explosion at the century-old facility. About 60 workers who were inside the building at the start of the four-alarm blaze escaped safely. A second explosion the next morning in a different section of the facility prompted a shelter-in-place order for residents within a 1-mile radius. Nearly 70 fire companies from the region responded to the fire, which took six days to fully extinguish.
The cause of the fire still remains under investigation.
SPS officials have not said how the construction of a new factory would be funded or when the company aims to complete a new facility, PhillyVoice reports. After the fire, U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) said she would seek federal support for the factory to be rebuilt in Abington Township.
SPS is owned by Precision Castparts Corp., a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, and has received numerous federal contracts from the U.S. Department of Defense.





