FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A former tomato packing facility in Fort Pierce will be transformed in the coming years.
INKAS, a global conglomerate based in Toronto, will convert it into a manufacturing facility for armored vehicles for both the personal and military marketplaces.
Toronto company plans to bring $38 million investment to Fort Pierce
"If we’re talking on the vehicular end, we’re going to build armored personnel carriers, we’re going to build infantry fighting vehicles," said INKAS Managing Partner Eugene Gerstein.
Gerstein says they can also outfit regular vehicles to withstand an explosion.
He tells me the company had been looking at Florida for some time.
“We said to ourselves, where is that last bastion of freedom in the United States of America?” he said.
Wes McCurry is the senior vice president of the Economic Development Council of St. Lucie County.
He says while the county has seen great success in the logistics and warehouse space in recent years, this is a way to diversify the area’s economy.
“It’s manufacturing and we absolutely want to see manufacturing coming into the county, but this is a little unique so it’s exciting," said McCurry.
According to the company history, one of its vehicles prevented a presidential assassination overseas.
“We know that we make a difference. We save lives every day," said Gerstein.
INKAS plans to invest $38 million and hire 294 people over the next five years. Many of those employees could be trained locally.
Last February, Gov. Ron DeSantis was on the campus of Indian River State College awarding the school $4 million, in part to build an innovative Center of Ballistics and Emerging Technology to produce safety and security equipment like ballistic vehicular glass.
“There’s a lot of St. Lucie talent in machine tooling, in painting. We’re great believers in developing future generations," said Gerstein.
Gerstein hopes the company could be up and running by the second quarter of next year.
