Prysmian North America will invest more than $1 billion to add a glass-preform plant, expanded fiber lines and new R&D space to its Claremont, North Carolina campus, creating 385 jobs by 2030. The project is the North Carolina anchor of a $1.25 billion, three-state buildout the company announced August 12, 2026, tied to a $6.29 billion fiber-supply deal with Molex signed weeks earlier.

A campus built to double fiber output

The Claremont expansion is really two projects on one site. The larger piece, a $1.02 billion investment in the fiber operations plant, brings in a new glass-preform facility that vertically integrates the raw-material stage of fiber production — a capability Prysmian’s Claremont site has not previously held in-house — alongside new fiber-draw lines and an expanded research and development center. That piece alone is expected to create 300 jobs. A separate $48 million investment in the campus’s optical cable operations plant will add 85 more jobs over the next two years, according to Prysmian’s announcement.

Combined, the two Claremont projects will add 975,000 square feet to the existing footprint, according to the North Carolina Governor’s Office — a figure that supersedes the roughly 900,000-square-foot estimate circulated in early local coverage. Prysmian says the new jobs will pay an average salary of $60,870, about 7 percent above Catawba County’s county-wide average of $56,937, for a projected regional payroll impact exceeding $23.4 million annually. The company will break ground on the expansion in mid-September, with Andrea Pirondini, CEO of Prysmian North America, framing the investment as a response to demand for broadband, 5G and 6G infrastructure rather than a single-customer deal.

Incentives are pledged, not yet approved

Unlike projects that arrive with financing already closed, the Claremont expansion’s public incentive package is still working through local approval. The Catawba County Board of Commissioners and Claremont City Council will hold a joint public hearing on September 1 to consider local incentives tied to the project, a step that has not yet occurred as of this writing.

At the state level, Prysmian has been awarded a performance-based grant of up to $1 million from the One North Carolina Fund, but the terms are conditional rather than guaranteed: the company must invest at least $665 million in the project before it qualifies for any payment, and the award requires matching funds from local government that have not yet been confirmed. North Carolina Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley and state Senator Mark Hollo both appeared at the announcement, but the substantive local incentive terms — property tax treatment, utility arrangements, workforce-training commitments — remain to be set at the September hearing.

One piece of a $1.25 billion, three-state package

The North Carolina coverage of this announcement has largely treated Claremont as a standalone story, but Prysmian’s own release frames it as one leg of a coordinated $1.25 billion investment across three states, expected to create up to 600 new U.S. manufacturing jobs in total. In Jackson, Tennessee, the company will spend approximately $100 million to double the capacity of its loose-tube and drop optical fiber cable facility, adding 100 jobs. In Lexington, South Carolina, an $80 million investment will expand FlexRibbon fiber optic cable manufacturing and add up to 130 jobs by 2030, according to remarks from South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster included in the same release.

The timing is not incidental. Prysmian disclosed that, one month before the Claremont announcement, it signed a €5.5 billion (roughly $6.29 billion) long-term agreement with Molex, a Koch Inc. company, to supply optical cables for data centers. Pirondini’s comment that the company is “one of just three U.S. manufacturers of fiber and optical cables” points to a specific strategic pivot: Prysmian is positioning its expanded Claremont output to move “inside” the data center itself, supplying the short-haul, high-density cabling that connects servers rather than only the long-haul transmission cable that has traditionally been its core business.

A crowded fiber corridor in Catawba County

Claremont sits roughly 15 miles from Hickory, North Carolina, where Corning is already spending up to $6 billion — anchored by a multiyear supply agreement with Meta — to build a new optical cable plant that Corning executives have said will become the largest facility of its kind in the world. That project, announced in January 2026 and now under construction, is expected to grow Corning’s North Carolina workforce by 15 to 20 percent from a base of more than 5,000 employees. Between the two companies, Catawba County is absorbing well over $7 billion in new fiber-optic manufacturing capacity within a roughly 15-mile radius inside of two years, a concentration that reflects how thoroughly the AI data center boom has reshaped demand for a product category that spent much of the 2010s in commodity-level growth.

Measured against North Carolina’s other recent economic-development megaproject, Prysmian’s numbers land on a similar cost-per-job scale. Toyota’s original 2021 announcement for its Liberty battery plant — the subject of the $1.29 billion Toyota EV Battery Plant announcement — pledged $1.29 billion for 1,750 jobs, or about $737,000 per job. Prysmian’s combined North Carolina investment of roughly $1.07 billion for 385 jobs works out to nearly $2.8 million per job, reflecting a far more capital-intensive, less labor-intensive manufacturing process. Toyota has since expanded its Liberty investment to nearly $14 billion and 5,100 jobs following a series of additions through 2023 and a 2025 production launch, illustrating how far an initial announcement in this region can grow once a site proves out — a trajectory Catawba County officials are likely hoping Prysmian’s Claremont campus will follow.

What still has to happen

Several elements of the project remain open. The county and city incentive package will not be finalized until the September 1 hearing, and its terms have not been made public. Prysmian has not disclosed a construction timeline beyond the mid-September groundbreaking and a 2030 completion target for the full jobs count, leaving the phasing of the glass-preform facility relative to the fiber-line expansion unclear. And while the company frames all four announced sites as connected, it has not said whether the Claremont glass facility will supply fiber preform to the Jackson or Lexington plants, a detail that would clarify how tightly integrated Prysmian’s new North American manufacturing network is meant to be.

Project Fact Sheet

• Project Name: Prysmian Claremont Campus Expansion (Fiber Operations Plant and Cable Operations Plant)
• Location: Claremont, Catawba County, North Carolina
• Project Value: More than $1.07 billion ($1.02 billion fiber plant plus $48 million cable plant), part of a $1.25 billion three-state package
• Owner/Client: Prysmian North America
• Key Components: New glass-preform manufacturing facility, expanded fiber-draw and optical cable lines, expanded R&D center, 975,000 square feet of new space
• Funding Source: Corporate capital investment; up to $1 million performance-based grant from the One North Carolina Fund (contingent on $665 million minimum investment and local matching funds)
• Construction Start: Groundbreaking scheduled for mid-September 2026
• Expected Completion: 2030
• Jobs Created: 385 (300 at the fiber plant, 85 at the cable plant), average salary $60,870
• Related Investment: €5.5 billion ($6.29 billion) supply agreement with Molex, signed July 2026

Project Team

• Owner/Developer: Prysmian North America
• State Partner: North Carolina Department of Commerce
• State Partner: Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina
• Local Partner: Catawba County Economic Development Corporation
• Utility Partner: Duke Energy
• Utility Partner: Piedmont Natural Gas
• Workforce Partner: Catawba Valley Community College
• Local Government: Catawba County Board of Commissioners and City of Claremont (incentive terms not yet finalized