PSO’s Inola River Rail Industrial Park Named Oklahoma Economic Development Council’s 2019 Project of the Year

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  • The new $360 million Sofidel tissue manufacturing facility located at Public Service Company of Oklahoma’s (PSO) 2,500- acre Inola River Rail Industrial Park is bringing new attention to the area after it was named a Project of the Year by the Oklahoma Economic Development Council (OEDC).
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TULSA – The new $360 million Sofidel tissue manufacturing facility located at Public Service Company of Oklahoma’s (PSO) 2,500- acre Inola River Rail Industrial Park is bringing new attention to the area after it was named a Project of the Year by the Oklahoma Economic Development Council (OEDC).

The award for the Sofidel project came in the category for a community with a population of 16,000 or less and was among several OEDC awards presented during the Governor’s Economic Development Conference, held Aug. 12-13, in Oklahoma City.

The event attracted economic development leaders from across the state.

The announcement that the new Sofidel plant would be located at PSO’s Inola River Rail Industrial Park was made in 2018. The project created 800 construction jobs and, when completed in the first quarter of 2020, the 1.8 million-square-foot facility will permanently employ 300 people and have an estimated annual economic impact of $100 million.

“In 2014 we began putting out the word that our property in Inola was available for high impact economic development projects,” said Janet Smith, Economic and Business Development Manager for PSO. “To ensure the site would be competitive, we began astringent, 18- month site certification process that exceeds the site due diligence conducted in most certification programs.

Those efforts, along with amazing support from nearly two dozen partner organizations, helped make the Inola River Rail Industrial Park site stand out and, ultimately, resulted in a major economic development project that will benefit not only Inola and Rogers County, but all of northeast Oklahoma.”

PSO’s Inola River Rail Industrial Park is certified property for large- scale industrial users. It is located in the town of Inola in Rogers County, along the Verdigris River, which is part of the McClellan Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System. The 2,500-acre site has both barge and rail access for tenants.

PSO, a unit of American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP), is an electric utility company serving over 554,000 customer accounts in eastern and southwestern Oklahoma. Based in Tulsa, PSO has approximately 3,800 megawatts of generating capacity.