TRW Automotive, a leading supplier of automotive braking products, will open a manufacturing facility in Oakwood South Industrial Park in March.

The announcement came Thursday during the monthly directors meeting of the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce.

Michael Hiser, group engineering manager for TRW, said the company will begin production in March and have a work force of 200 by the end of the year.

When fully operational, the plant will produce 4 million brakes a year for larger vehicles, including the Ford F-250 truck, larger Dodge trucks and the military version of the Humvee.

“We are so fortunate to have an international company, which is a major automotive supplier,” said Kit Dunlap, president of the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce. “It also shows that we are on the radar screen along the automotive belt between Greenville, S.C., and Alabama.”

The “automotive belt” is an area bordered on its northern edge by the large BMW assembly plant near Greenville, S.C., and to the south by the Mercedes-Benz plant near Birmingham, Ala.

Also included in the region is an existing Hyundai factory near Montgomery, Ala., and a planned Kia assembly facility in West Point.

TRW will occupy a building that Stone Mountain-based Pattillo Construction was building as a speculative site.

“This is a great example of why we need to have spec buildings and industrial sites for development,” said Tim Evans, the chamber’s vice president for economic development.

He said the company had looked elsewhere in Northeast Georgia and metro Atlanta before deciding on the Oakwood site.

The company, which has its headquarters in Livonia, Mich., near Detroit, has 24 manufacturing facilities in 13 countries. Its key products are various automotive safety devices ranging from brakes to restraint systems.

It is the world’s third largest braking supplier, according to information on the company’s Web site.

The brakes to be produced at Oakwood are anti-lock caliper braking systems for larger vehicles including the High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or HMMWV, a light, highly mobile, diesel-powered, four-wheel-drive vehicle in demand by the military for the war on terror.

Contact: hblackwood@gainesvilletimes.com, (770) 718-3423

Originally published Friday, January 26, 2007