© 2024 KASU
Your Connection to Music, News, Arts and Views for 65 Years
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
KASU will produce features about local music, news, arts, and views which will air during Morning Edition. Just in case you missed your favorite story or you want to hear it again, you may read them again or listen to them on demand in our Morning Edition Features podcasts.

$20 million dollar plant, 130 new jobs coming to Jonesboro

Johnathan Reaves, KASU News

Credit Hefei Risever Machinery Company
Credit Johnathan Reaves, KASU News
Picture of what the Risever plant in Jonesboro will look like.

Jonesboro Unlimited announced that Hefei Risever Machinery Company is coming to Jonesboro.  The new manufacturing plant will be built in the Craighead Technology Park on East Highland Drive in Jonesboro.  Risever is a family-owned Chinese company that has three plants in China.  This announcement means it will be Risever’s first American plant.  General Manager of Risever Yonggang Lai says Jonesboro was chosen after more than 70 other cities were considered.

“We spent a year investigating and searching communities across five states, we are proud to announce that Jonesboro will house the first Risever plant in the United States,” said Lai to rousing applause. 

Risever makes machine parts for heavy equipment for manufacturers like Caterpilllar, Volvo, and Komatsu.  Over five years, 130 jobs will be created when fully operational.  The total investment is 20-million-dollars.  Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson says he has been making trips to China for these kinds of announcements.

“It’s the fifth Chinese company that we have been successful in recruiting,” says Hutchinson. “This is important because before I became Governor, there were none.  This announcement expresses confidence in our entire state and the relationships that we have built that are so important.”

Hutchinson says he will make his third trip to China next week to visit the Risever plant.  He will leave on Halloween.  He tells what the trip will also entail.

“We will promote agriculture that is so important to this region, new business opportunities, and to rekindle those relationships that are so strong with those Chinese companies.”

Jonesboro Mayor Harold Perrin welcomed Risever to Jonesboro and gave Lai a key to the city.  He said that Jonesboro was blessed and was excited to work with Risever.  The Risever plant in Jonesboro will target an annual production capacity of 18-thosuand tons of steel.  

Johnathan Reaves is the News Director for KASU Public Radio. As part of an Air Force Family, he moved to Arkansas from Minot, North Dakota in 1986. He was first bitten by the radio bug after he graduated from Gosnell High School in 1992. While working on his undergraduate degree, he worked at KOSE, a small 1,000 watt AM commercial station in Osceola, Arkansas. Upon graduation from Arkansas State University in 1996 with a degree in Radio-Television Broadcast News, he decided that he wanted to stay in radio news. He moved to Stuttgart, Arkansas and worked for East Arkansas Broadcasters as news director and was there for 16 years.