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Company's First U.S. Location
Quantico Corporate Center to house Rheinmetall office
By JENNIFER BUSKE
jbuske@staffordcountysun.com
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
A European company that made Stafford the home of its first United States office, officially announced its presence in the community last week.
American Rheinmetall Munition, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Germany-based company Rheinmetall AG, is operating in an office off Garrisonville Road, but will relocate to the Quantico Corporate Center when it opens toward the end of this year, Rheinmetall’s U.S. representative Patrick Gallagher said.
“We are honored that American Rheinmetall Munition has selected Stafford as its launching pad for its U.S. interests,” Stafford Economic Development Director Tim Baroody said. “… They are in good company in Stafford, as they join a growing number of national security companies that have discovered Stafford’s many attractive business assets.”
In 2006, Rheinmetall was awarded a five-year production contract with the Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico, Gallagher said, noting that it was this agreement that sparked interest in opening an office in Stafford. “We looked at Prince William and Spotsylvania counties as well, but Stafford provides the best benefits for Rheinmetall,” Gallagher said. The business-friendly environment and proximity to Quantico attracted us to the county.”
Under the contract, Rheinmetall will provide environmentally friendly and non-toxic training ammunition to the Marine Corps, Gallagher said, noting the company is the only one in the world that creates this type of ammunition.
“Environmentally friendly technology is something defense companies have been investigating because it’s been a tremendous expense for the Department of Defense to clean up ranges where led-based ammunitions are fired and embedded into the ground,” he said.
The management and oversight of the contract will be conducted at the Stafford office, however the assembly and production of the ammunition will be completed at factories throughout the United States, Gallagher said.
Gallagher said the company will also hire about four to eight contract specialists, subcontract specialists and technical engineers to work in the Stafford office.
“This is a $40 million contract and we expect Rheinmetall to win some other ongoing work,” Gallagher said. “And, if we do, some of the productions of those products will move to the U.S. as well and we could see those dollars also managed through the Stafford business office.”
Besides working with Quantico, Rheinmetall is also interacting with Dahlgren, Gallagher said. The ammunition, which the company also provides to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Florida, was tested at Dahlgren and Rheinmetall plans to continue working with the Naval Surface Warfare Center in evaluating products.
According to a county news release, Rheinmetall AG employs about 18,500 people throughout the world and had annual sales of $4 billion in 2005.
When American Rheinmetall moves into the Quantico Corporate Center - Silver Companies’ $300 million project - it will occupy a 7,500-square-foot space. The entire office park, which contains roughly 1 million square feet of Class A office space, is located just south of Quantico and is scheduled to be completed by November.
