GREGORY, Texas — You can see Gulf Coast Growth Venture’s petrochemical facility just beyond a fence near their administration building. Construction on it just finished last week.
Brandon Maxwell, the public affairs manager for the company, said they produce two main products, primarily monoethylene glycol and a product called polyethylene. He explained that monoethylene glycol goes into products like latex paint and polyethylene is a plastic.
He said San Patricio County was the perfect spot for the facility because of its infrastructure and transportation options like the Port of Corpus Christi.
“But the Permian basin is a key driver for us here, this low cost natural gas source is what allows us to site here in San Pat County,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell said they spent over $33 million in San Patricio County with local suppliers, vendors and contractors. He said during construction, they bought in over 6,000 construction jobs.
“Now that we’re fully operational, we’re peaking right now at about 1100 jobs. That will start to subside over the next couple of months and we’ll settle into our normal stay which will be about 600 full-time manufacturing personnel,” he said.
Those employees will include 400 full-time Exxon Mobile workers and 200 full-time contractors, and he said half of those employees are from the Coastal Bend.
County Judge David Krebs said to keep up with the other workers coming into San Patricio County, developers are already planning to build houses in the area.
“They want to build in Sinton, they want to build in Aransas Pass, they want to build in Ingleside, they want to build in Odem and stuff and I think they’re committing, for every five years building at least 1,000 homes here in San Patricio County,” Judge Krebs said.
