Blue Origin opens Huntsville engine production facility

Applause... 5 seconds after years of back-and-forth -- huntsville is now the home to blue origin's newest engine production facility.

State and local leaders were in the rocket city today for the opening of the 200 million dollar project!

Thanks for joining us, i'm najahe sherman.

And i'm dan shaffer.

Waay 31's shosh bedrosian spoke with engineers about this milestone - and what it means for huntsville.

John vilja, senior vice president of blue origin "it's not everyday a brand new rocket factory gets open.

And that happens once in a generation" blue origin is now officially in huntsville - where it will handle the development of the be-4 and be3-u engines, that run on liquid natural gas.

Shosh on cam - shot already now - engineers for blue origin tell me this facility that you see right here -- will be where part of the manufacturing will happen for the be4 engine.

They hope to fill this facility with 300 people by 2023.

John vilja, senior vice president of blue engines "we'll be able to test both of the engines that's we'll build here.

So we'll be able to build them, test them, and get them ready for flight right here in huntsville" but it wasn't always a done deal.

In 2017 - blue origin said it would build a huntsville facility only if it won a united launch alliance contract to build the engine for ula's new vulcan rocket.

It won that contract in september of 2018.

Blue origin invested 200 million dollars into the facility - and alabama put up 20-million dollars in incentives!

Mayor tommy battle says he's proud of the partnership.

Tommy battle, mayor of huntsville "we're gonna take ourselves back to places such as the moon, mars, way back into space and we're going to be able to make things that go right here in huntsville, alabama" john vilja, senior vice president of blue engines "huntsville has a really nice base of people who are experienced with rocket engines.

It's the rocket city and we were able to find really great employees here" reporting in huntsville...sbwa ay31news.

Thanks shosh.

The city of huntsville provided 6-million dollars worth of those incentives.

1-million went to the company to offset construction costs.

The rest involves the land in research park where the facility was built.

It was valued at 5 million dollars.

This is a small part of the economic growth huntsville is seeing.

More than 6-thousand new jobs and 4.1 billion dollars in investment is expected to come to north alabama over the next few years.

Some of those projects include the blue origin facility - the 1.6 billion dollar mazda toyota plant - and data centers