With Nucor's pole expansion, Amazon's robotics plant, and Mammoth Solar's buildout all chasing welders, CNC operators, and skilled trades workers at the same time, where is our own crew most exposed in that competition for labor right now?

Pull your open requisitions for welders, CNC operators, and electricians and compare your posted wages against the roughly $87,500 to $100,000 averages these projects are offering. If you are below that range in Johnson, Montgomery, or Tippecanoe County, expect turnover before any of these plants even break ground.

As SK hynix's water needs and three other major projects strain Johnson and Tippecanoe County utility capacity, have we confirmed our own facility has headroom to grow in those same utility districts?

Call your utility and ask for written confirmation of available capacity in gallons per day or kilowatts, not a verbal assurance. SK hynix's reported water demand alone could consume most of the new treatment capacity West Lafayette is building, and you want that answer before committing capital to an expansion in the same district.

With BlackRock now owning the building that houses Cummins' Indiana distribution hub, should we rethink how our own key facilities depend on a landlord's balance sheet decisions?

Check your own lease agreements for change of ownership clauses and rent escalation triggers tied to a sale. A financial buyer's priorities are not the same as an operating company's, and that difference can show up in maintenance response times and future rent negotiations.

Manufacturing News TEG Daily

October 9, 2026 · Montgomery · Johnson · Pulaski · Tippecanoe · NIPSCO · AES INDIANA

Nucor, Amazon, and Doral Solar Compete for the Indiana Welding Workforce Shortage

Nucor, Amazon, and Doral Solar compete for Indiana's welding workforce shortage while SK hynix splits $500M in tax revenue and BlackRock buys into Whiteland.

Daniel BurkePublished every day

Five Indiana capital investments landed within the past week, and nearly all of them draw from the same shrinking pool of skilled trades workers. Nucor is putting $105 million into its Crawfordsville pole plant. Amazon is putting more than $100 million into a Greenwood robotics facility. Doral Renewables just switched on the final 900 megawatts of its Mammoth Solar complex. West Lafayette split $500 million in SK hynix tax revenue and advanced an $85 million sewer expansion. And a BlackRock-linked buyer paid $103 million for the Cummins-leased warehouse in Whiteland. The thread running through the first two is the Indiana welding workforce shortage: the American Welding Society projects the country will need 320,500 more welding professionals by 2029, and Nucor and Amazon are about to recruit from the same slice of that pool at the same time, in the same part of the state.

01Montgomery

Nucor's $105M Crawfordsville Expansion Adds to the Indiana Welding Workforce Shortage

Indiana Governor Mike Braun's office announced on October 8 that Nucor will invest $105 million to expand its Towers and Structures plant in Crawfordsville, Montgomery County, adding about 125,000 square feet and up to 100 jobs averaging $87,500 a year by the end of 2029. The plant, which started production in 2025 and currently employs 328 people, breaks ground in the first quarter of 2027 and starts hiring by mid-2027 to build utility poles for grid hardening, renewable projects, and EV charging buildout. Nucor feeds this pole line with steel from its own Crawfordsville sheet mill, which gives it a cost and lead-time edge a buyer like Valmont Industries, which purchases steel on the open market, cannot fully match.

Impact: Nucor's edge here is vertical integration: it feeds Crawfordsville's pole line with sheet and plate from its own EAF mills, a cost and lead-time advantage rival Valmont Industries can't fully match since Valmont buys steel externally. But Nucor's own SEC filings show steel products segment earnings already dipped in Q1 2026 on rising internal input costs, and the release names zero utility offtake customers, a notable gap given Nucor's largest single customer is just ~5% of total sales, suggesting this pole business may be more spot-market dependent than the confident 'strong demand' framing lets on.
Watch: Montgomery County Council's finalization of local incentives, which still needs to clear before the Q1 2027 groundbreak can proceed on schedule.
For the huddle: Given Nucor's pole output is gated by capacity at its own Crawfordsville sheet mill, where in our supply chain do we have a similar single-point dependency on one internal or sister-plant input?

SourcesBraun: Nucor Corporation to expand manufacturing operations in Crawfordsville (giant.fm)

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02Johnson

Amazon's $100M Greenwood Robotics Plant Pulls From the Same Labor Pool

Amazon announced on September 24 that it will invest more than $100 million in a 585,000 square foot advanced manufacturing facility at 1175 Collins Road in Greenwood, Johnson County, creating 300 jobs in CNC operation, robotic welding, and powder coating that average close to $100,000 a year, with production starting by 2028. The plant sits next to Amazon's existing SIN9 fulfillment center and will build robotics and automation equipment for Amazon's North American fulfillment network. The address matters more than the headline figure.

Impact: The real story is the address: this plant sits inside Amazon's existing I-65 fulfillment cluster, mirroring the hub-and-spoke model Amazon used when it built its Westborough, Massachusetts robotics plant 18 miles from its robotics HQ, this isn't a greenfield bet on Indiana, it's a captive supply chain that builds the robots next door to where they'll be deployed. Those 300 jobs, paying 60-70% above Johnson County's median, will pull welders and CNC operators from regional manufacturers already reporting vacancies over 120 days, and the press release is conspicuously silent on any tax abatement, Amazon's earlier Greenwood deal moved through county council under the code name 'Project Brutus' before terms surfaced.
Watch: Whether a Johnson County Council incentive package for this project surfaces publicly, and under what project name.
For the huddle: With Amazon offering ~$100K average wages for welders and CNC operators a few miles away, what's our retention plan for the shop-floor roles most likely to get poached first?

SourcesAmazon Announces New Advanced Manufacturing Facility in Greenwood (buildingindiana.com)

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03Pulaski

Doral Brings the Final 900 MW of Mammoth Solar Online in Pulaski County

Doral Renewables held an event on October 7 in Winamac, Pulaski County, signifying commercial operation of the Mammoth South, Central I, and Central II phases, a combined 900 megawatts that complete the 1.3 gigawatt Mammoth Solar complex spanning Pulaski and Starke counties. Bechtel built the three phases over 18 months with about 1,800 workers at peak, Doral closed $1.5 billion in financing, and offtake is locked in with AEP Energy and corporate buyers including PNC Bank through Constellation Energy. The project lifts Indiana's total solar capacity by more than 20% in a single event.

Impact: A 20% jump in statewide solar capacity in one event will reshuffle MISO's dispatch stack just as AES Indiana is simultaneously building its own Crossvine Solar and Petersburg Energy Center projects on the same grid, competing new capacity hitting the system at once. For Pulaski County, a roughly 12,000-resident county, the project is projected to deliver $25-46 million in economic development payments over its life, a scale of local revenue that will likely soften the kind of anti-solar zoning pushback now spreading in counties like Tippecanoe and St. Joseph.
Watch: How AES Indiana's Crossvine Solar and Petersburg Energy Center timelines shift now that Mammoth's full 1.3 GW is dispatching into MISO.
For the huddle: With Indiana's solar capacity up 20% overnight, does it change the economics of shifting any energy-intensive shifts toward daytime hours?

Sources900-MW portion of Indiana’s Mammoth solar project coming online (solarpowerworldonline.com)

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04Tippecanoe

West Lafayette Splits $500M in SK hynix Tax Revenue, Advances $85M Sewer Expansion

The West Lafayette City Council voted 8 to 1 on October 5 to approve an interlocal agreement splitting roughly $500 million in projected local tax revenue from SK hynix's $4 billion semiconductor plant in Tippecanoe County over the next 30 years, with 52% going to Tippecanoe School Corporation and the rest divided between the city and county. The council also gave initial approval to an $85 million expansion of its Water Resource Recovery Facility, raising capacity from 10.5 to 15 million gallons a day, with about $22 million of SK hynix's one-time $45 million infrastructure payment backing the bonds. Councilor David Sanders cast the lone no vote, citing a lack of transparency from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation.

Impact: SK hynix is effectively cross-subsidizing utility rate relief for West Lafayette residents years before its plant opens in 2029, a deal that holds only if the chipmaker hits its performance milestones, since the agreement guarantees cash flow even if the plant never opens. The deeper risk operators should flag: West Lafayette's negotiated 20% local revenue share (versus the state's 12% statutory floor) isn't codified in law, it's a handshake with the IEDC that a future leadership change could revise without a city council vote, and a resident lawsuit challenging the SK hynix rezoning has a trial date set for December 2026.
Watch: The December 2026 trial date on the rezoning lawsuit, which could complicate the April 2029 wastewater completion timeline the bonds are sized around.
For the huddle: If SK hynix's reported ~4 million-gallon-a-day water need eats most of the new 4.5 MGD of treatment capacity, how much headroom is actually left for our own expansion plans in that same utility district?

SourcesWest Lafayette OKs sewage expansion, divvies up SK hynix tax revenue (jconline.com)

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05Johnson

BlackRock-Linked Buyer Pays $103M for the Cummins-Leased Building in Whiteland

Dallas-based Mohr Capital sold Building 6 of its Mohr Logistics Park in Whiteland, Johnson County, a 1.06 million square foot facility fully leased to Cummins through August 2036, for $103 million in a deal that closed in late September. The buyer, St. Louis-based HPS ET Whiteland LLC, is managed by Elmtree Funds, which BlackRock fully acquired in September 2025, making BlackRock's net-lease platform the real counterparty behind the purchase rather than the boutique investor the listing implied. The building sits inside a larger consolidation.

Impact: Elmtree Funds was fully acquired by BlackRock in September 2025, meaning the real counterparty behind this $103 million purchase is BlackRock's net-lease platform betting on Cummins' credit, not a boutique PE shop as the original listing described it. The building itself is the linchpin of a larger consolidation: Cummins has used this Whiteland site to justify closing its Whitestown distribution center (59 jobs) and shifting work once handled in Memphis by FedEx Supply Chain (600+ jobs displaced), meaning this Indiana 'win' is tied to real job losses in other communities within Cummins' own network.
Watch: Lease-up progress on Mohr's two new 950,000-square-foot spec buildings at the park, as Indianapolis industrial vacancy sits near 7%.
For the huddle: As our logistics partners consolidate distribution footprints the way Cummins just did, are we tracking which of our own regional hubs could be the next one declared redundant?

SourcesColliers Arranges Sale of 1.1 MSF Industrial Facility Near Indianapolis (rebusinessonline.com)

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