Murfreesboro's Gateway District gets a big HQ win, 250 jobs

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Nathan Morgan

M-Tek provides a variety of parts for North American auto plants, such as Nissan's Smyrna plant, pictured here.

Scott Harrison

Staff Reporter- Nashville Business Journal

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M-Tek, a subsidiary of Japanese auto-parts maker Kasai Kogyo Co. Ltd., is building its North American headquarters in Murfreesboro, the company announced Friday.

M-Tek will build its headquarters on 10 acres in the city's Gateway District, investing $13.4 million and adding 250 jobs in Murfreesboro, according to a news release.

"We are happy to have this opportunity to announce this milestone event in M-Tek's history," President and CEO Masaki Sugisawa said in the release. "We are pleased to call Rutherford County home to our North American headquarters."

One hundred of the jobs are new for M-Tek. Another 100 will be transferred from M-Tek's Manchester, Tenn., manufacturing location and the remaining jobs will transfer from operations in Farmington Hills, Mich., and Dublin, Ohio.

Construction of the 63,800-square-foot facility is expected to be completed in August 2016. The new facility will support operations in in Manchester, Smyrna and Chattanooga, Tenn., alongside other locations in Michigan, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama and Mexico.

M-Tek manufacturers a range of automotive parts for several North American assembly plants, including door trip panels, rear shelf, trunk trim, dash insulators and plastic injection trim. To meet the growing global market demands, M-Tek also provides export sales to Mexico and Asia.

The following are excerpts from today's news release:

"We want to congratulate M-TEK on the decision to expand its presence in Tennessee with the new Murfreesboro headquarters location, and we thank the company for the new jobs created in our state," Gov. Bill Haslam said. "Today's announcement is another signal of Tennessee's momentum in the automotive industry, and we are grateful to the company for bringing us one step closer to our goal of making Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs."

Scott Harrison covers government and economic development, banking and law.