Wilcox County, Alabama
Golden Dragon Copper USA
35 acres / 456,000 square feet
GD Copper USA is a 456,000-square-foot manufacturing facility of precise copper tubing. Based in China, Golden Dragon, the world’s largest producer of precise copper tubing, decided to open its first U.S.-facility in Wilcox County to bring themselves closer to raw materials and their products closer to their customers, reducing delivery times from weeks to days.
The copper tube manufacturing facility was developed on 35 acres of a 120-acre site, with GMC providing the majority of the architecture, engineering and environmental services, allowing for close in-house coordination between the disciplines and an accelerated design and construction schedule as required by the owner. Innovative sequencing, in-house services, and established relationships with the contractor and state agencies all contributed to the speed and efficiency of this project. Our architectural and engineering teams were able to coordinate and phase the construction of the building, which has complex and precise foundation designs to accommodate the heavy industrial equipment and precise processes needed to produce the copper tubing.
The precise foundations required that the steel building shell be erected first to protect the foundations from weather and allowed the rest of the project to proceed more smoothly.
GMC was responsible for the building design, site design, surveys, rough grading, infrastructure, site drainage, an industrial wastewater treatment plant, geotechnical engineering and construction materials testing. Environmental services included air permitting, core permitting, ADEM Permitting, wetland delineation, and a hazardous Spill Prevention Control and Countermeasure (SPCC) Plan.
This project will ultimately create opportunities for 500 jobs in one of the poorest counties in the US.
