Lumina Picks Ports Of Indiana-Jeffersonville For U.S. Hub
An international supplier of specialized minerals plans to develop its first U.S. facility at Ports of Indiana-Jeffersonville, the port announced November 12.
Lumina Sustainable Materials will invest $14.3 million initially at the Jeffersonville port to establish a multimineral processing facility, logistics base and test laboratory to serve the polymers, electronic glass, coatings, aerospace, building and construction markets. The new operation, to be located at 1302 Port Road, aims to add 50 full-time jobs by 2027 with an average wage of $35 per hour.
“The total value package offered by Ports of Indiana and the state of Indiana is unmatched,” Lumina Sustainable Materials CEO Brian Hanrahan said. “The ability to ship by barge into the Midwest, to leverage logistics facilities and services and to partner with the port on future expansions and container exports makes Jeffersonville a perfect place for our U.S. processing and research facility. We mapped our target customers for the polymers, coatings and construction industries, and Jeffersonville is in the center of it all.”
Lumina sources materials from around the world and works with Purdue University, NASA and NASA subcontractors to develop mineral-based products, improve lunar simulants and research projects involving space travel. The company will remodel an existing building at the Jeffersonville port that has been vacant for more than 10 years and will partner with Ports of Indiana to develop a shared laboratory facility for research and educational use by community partners and schools.
“We’re thrilled our Jeffersonville port can serve as a launch pad for Lumina’s first U.S. facility,” Ports of Indiana CEO Jody Peacock said. “This innovative company did expensive research to find the ideal U.S. location and logistics network to support its global supply chain. We’re excited to partner with Lumina to grow business and develop processing and laboratory facilities to create innovative products and drive further research and education in our community.”
The Jeffersonville facility will use the port’s barge and rail connections and serve as Lumina’s processing and logistics hub for the Western Hemisphere. In addition to mineral processing, the site will manufacture advanced polymer additives, including concentrates of novel flame retardants, performance modifiers and lightweight mineral fillers.
Lumina primarily processes anorthosite, a silicate mineral, replacing less environmentally friendly raw materials to produce electronic glass, plastics, paint and fiberglass, according to Ports of Indiana. The product comes from the White Mountain Mine in western Greenland, which has the largest anorthosite deposit on earth. The only larger deposit is on the moon.
Lumina also works with allied material suppliers worldwide, sourcing pyrophylite from Canada, barium sulfate from Morocco, bauxite from Guyana and graphite from Greenland. It is also developing the first vertically integrated manufacturing operations for producing battery anodes from mine to finished active anode material.
Based on the company’s job creation plans, the Indiana Economic Development Corporation provided an incentive of up to $725,000 in the form of performance-based tax credits.
