Plans to build an Electrolux AB refrigerator factory in the border city of Ciudad Juarez are moving forward despite a bitter dispute over the land where the appliances giant was planning to build its new plant, a company official said Thursday.
“Our project is moving forward according to plan and is on schedule,” said Tony Evans, a spokesman for Sweden-based Electrolux AB. “We have selected a contractor for the design and building of the new factory.”
Electrolux announced in January that it will close its refrigerator manufacturing plant in Greenville, Mich. and move those 2,700 jobs to Mexico. Officials said the plant will continue operating into 2005, but have not provided a more specific closing date.
In April, Chihuahua Gov. Patricio Martinez said the company would invest $100 million to build the first phase of the plant on 500 acres located in Ejido San Isidro, a communal farming area on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez.
But Ejido San Isidro farmers claim the land Martinez sold to Electrolux is part of a plot of 8,900 acres that had been awarded to them by a Mexican court.
“Our legal battle continues,” said Ejido representative Antonio Alvarez. “We don’t oppose Juarez’s development, but we have to defend what’s ours.”
A federal court is deciding who owns the land, Alvarez said.
Meanwhile, the 200 Ejido San Isidro farmers have agreed to donate 700 acres for the new plant. But Martinez has said the farmers can’t donate land that has belonged to the state of Chihuahua since 1951.
Chihuahua government officials did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment. But Chihuahua’s secretary of urban development, Roberto Cano, has said that a new site for the future factory already has been selected in case a federal court looking into the land dispute rules against Chihuahua state.
Evans declined to comment on the land dispute in Ciudad Juarez. But he added that Electrolux AB has already purchased 500 acres from Promotora de la Industria Chihuahuense, the state’s industrial development agency. But he wouldn’t say whether the land was part of the disputed lot.
He said construction of the new plant is set to start later this year.
Electrolux already operates a plant in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, that makes parts for its vacuum cleaners. The new refrigerator factory, which is expected to employ at least 3,000 people, will manufacture between 1.2 and 1.4 million refrigerators annually.
From freep