As the power source behind the luxuries of refrigerated food, machine-washed clothes, and television entertainment, most customers might view our service primarily from a residential perspective. However, an electric utility’s impact reaches deep into a community’s roots.

One of the biggest factors companies assess before locating or expanding their business to an area is the affordability and reliability of their energy source. So, when communities need to attract new industries and jobs, the electric utility’s economic development team lends a hand with locating and preparing building sites, and coordinating new developments. These are responsibilities that Entergy Mississippi has had a great history of accomplishing.

As one of its first economic development actions, Mississippi Power & Light – Entergy Mississippi’s former name – leveraged its role as an electric utility provider to help the state bring in more industrial customers after the decline in agriculture careers in the 1950s. Led by the utility company, the Helping Build Mississippi initiative became the state’s oldest private economic development program.

Building momentum for Mississippi

Powering communities through economic development continues to be one of Entergy’s most proud contributions to the state.

Most recently, Entergy Mississippi played a key role in recruiting a to the state – the single largest capital investment in state history. The transformative project will provide at least 1,000 direct jobs and make Mississippi a technology leader in the Southeast United States.

While the campuses for the project will be located at two sites in the Madison County – one being the Megasite, the impacts of this sizeable investment will reach across our service territory – creating support for economic development, education and infrastructure investments.

In 2022, Entergy Mississippi helped secure $808 million in capital investments and helped to facilitate the state’s new . These investments helped create nearly 1,050 new jobs within the state.

Notable projects include the expansion of Nissan Canton, which will invest $500 million to transform the Madison County assembly plant to build all-new EV models starting in 2025. Since its opening in 2003, Nissan Canton’s impact has reached far across the Jackson Metro area and helped establish the state’s growing automotive sector. 

The Nissan Canton plant has been touted as one of Mississippi’s largest economic development projects in its 200-year history, and Entergy Mississippi is continually building on the momentum from the significant investment.

Recently, the economic development team helped secure Milwaukee Tool’s $60 million expansion in Grenada. The new manufacturing facility brings more than 800 jobs to the state and helped accelerate the building of a new Entergy Mississippi substation. The investments from the project in turn support more growth in the area. 

The team also facilitated Menasha Packaging’s expansion in Pelahatchie and Jordan Carriers’ project in Natchez. Menasha’s $79 million investment will create more than 20 new jobs. Jordan Carriers’ new 20,000-square-foot headquarters consists of $11 million worth of investment and 30 new jobs.

Each of these projects represent customers from various regions of Entergy Mississippi’s service area – highlighting our economic development footprint across the state.

Preparing communities for progress

In addition to partnering with cities and counties to secure new investment, Entergy Mississippi contributes to community growth by awarding grants to help make industrial sites more attractive to prospective companies.

Every year since 2017, Entergy Mississippi has awarded Excellerator Competitive Communities Grants to local economic development organizations to help them stay competitive in marketing their sites and communities to companies. The program has awarded 20 organizations and over a half a million dollars to date.

Through its , Entergy Mississippi helps communities with due diligence to make economic development sites ready for development. Doing this helps to better attract prospective companies, who want to start businesses as quickly as possible.

With the help of the Qualified Site Program, Mississippi communities have received nearly $14 million from the Mississippi Development Authority. MDA’s Site Development Grant Program allows communities to better prepare highly competitive sites for immediate industrial development. Notably, the Vicksburg River Megasite and Port Complex received $4 million to perform wetlands mitigation. Tate, Madison, Bolivar, Hinds, Pike and Rankin counties also benefitted from site awards.

Staying aggressive to build a brighter future

One of the critical ways to ensure that Mississippi has an advantage over other states is through Entergy Mississippi’s site qualification process. The utility’s economic development team identifies and prepares sites for certification before companies commit to the property. In this way, the team identifies risks on the front end to mitigate concerns for potential customers to locate in the future.

Mississippi needs to stay aggressive to take advantage of every opportunity in the Southeast United States. The future is bright for the state, and our economic development team is working every day to bring in new projects for growth.

Sites in Bolivar, Adams, Warren, Madison and Rankin counties will all benefit from improvements the grant dollars will fund. The idea is to make these already-desirable sites even more so by getting them “shovel-ready,” meaning interested companies could quickly locate, expand and create jobs in the area.

These sites are among 23 in the state that will share in . The grant dollars are funded through the Mississippi Development Authority, Appalachian Regional Commission and the RESTORE Act.

The grant recipients in Entergy’s service area are:

• Cleveland-Bolivar County Chamber of Commerce – $25,000 for completing environmental due diligence at Cleveland Industrial Park
• Madison County Economic Development Authority – $250,000 for clearing and grubbing at the Madison County Mega Site
• Rankin First Economic Development Authority – $250,000 for construction of a building pad at the East Metro Center Rail Site at the EMC Industrial Park
• Belwood Industrial Park, Adams County – $1,825,977 to complete levee construction and make drainage improvements
• Ceres Research and Industrial Interplex – Site B, Warren County – $1,368,000 for stream mitigation, drainage improvements, water and sewer system improvements, and to design entrance improvements

Entergy Mississippi participated in the grant funding process by joining other state utilities in hiring a national consultant to identify sites for the Select Sites program, one of three programs funded by these grants. The Select Sites program was created in 2021 to increase the number of highly competitive industrial sites in the state that are available and ready to meet prospective companies’ needs. Twenty of the state’s top publicly owned industrial sites were evaluated by Strategic Development Group, based in Greenville, South Carolina.

Congratulations to all the grant winners—a win for one is a win for all working to bring jobs and growth to the state!

The golden shovel has long represented economic development. It is also the name chosen by Area Development’s annual awards program recognizing states that won large job-creating and investment projects during the previous year. So, we couldn’t be prouder that , one of five in the country.

The magazine highlighted 10 Mississippi projects as reasons for the award, and Entergy Mississippi’s economic development department was involved in several of those:

• Spectra Laboratories. A new location in Southaven Mississippi, Spectra Labs is creating 300 new jobs that will focus on dialysis products and services. began with an economic development package Entergy sent to site consultants promoting properties in our service area.
• Medline Industries. also chose Southaven for its new 1.2-million square foot facility. The company will create 450 jobs.
• Baxter International. has constructed a new facility on its campus to accommodate a line that will produce products for the healthcare market.

Finally, Entergy Nuclear announced a $127.1-million investment in its operations in Hinds and Claiborne counties that would create 320 jobs.

While Entergy’s involvement differs from project to project, our economic development team works with prospects and communities in a variety of ways:

• If a company is looking to expand, we connect them to incentives and offer general business help. We ensure these companies receive all benefits Entergy has to offer, such as going over their yearly usage to identify cost-savings opportunities.
• When working to locate industries, we work with the local economic development organization, the Mississippi Development Authority and other relative economic development organizations. This might include helping a county get sites certified in an industrial park or marketing existing buildings or sites to consultants and industries.
• We also offer annual grants to communities for improvements to sites or for marketing an area to prospects, and we offer or connect community leaders to training opportunities in economic development.

Other Mississippi projects mentioned by Area Development in announcing the Gold Shovel award include an expansion at Relativity Space, where a 3D printing process will build rockets; a U.S. Coast Guard contract that will allow VT Halter Marine to expand its shipyard in Pascagoula; an Amazon distribution center in Desoto County, and projects in Forest, Newton and Marshall counties.

When choosing its annual winners, the magazine considers a combination of weighted factors. These include the number of new jobs to be created in relation to the state’s population, the combined dollar amount of the investments, the number of new facilities and the diversity of industry represented. Awards are given in five population categories, ranging from more than 12 million to fewer than 3 million. The latter category is the one in which Mississippi competes.

Other 2020 Gold Shovel winners are Texas, Virginia, Tennessee and Utah.

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Why is this important? Because it means that they are ready to compete on a national level for jobs and growth, and that’s no small thing. Trying to get an industry to locate or expand in a community involves fierce competition. Prospects know this, so their expectations are high. Communities must be ready to respond to prospects’ requests quickly and effectively if they want the jobs and investment the location or expansion would bring.

When an economic development organization has an Entergy qualified site for consideration, it is an assurance to prospects that professional engineers and other relevant specialists have completed an in-depth analysis of the property and that the results of the studies are available for prospects to review. It also means that projects undertaken on these sites will be overseen by a team that provides answers, solves problems, streamlines processes and removes the red tape that can complicate a business’s location or expansion.

When Entergy qualifies a site, it means a lot of the work has already been done That helps businesses go from concept to operations quickly and efficiently, and with accurate cost estimates. It eliminates the unknown and mitigates a lot of the risk that’s inherent with developing a site. This gives communities a big advantage in the selection process.

Could a community do this work on its own without help from Entergy? It could, but site development is costly. Leveraging the resources of Entergy and other economic development agencies, like Delta Regional Authority and the Mississippi Development Authority, helps make site development achievable. That’s especially true for smaller, more rural communities.

But the help doesn’t stop there. Entergy will also provide resources to promote the sites and market them to national and international brokerage firms and site consultants.

We’re proud to add these sites to our growing list of qualified properties:

East Metropolitan Center. Rankin First Economic Development Authority’s site is in its 1,133-acre business and industrial park next to Interstate 20 in Brandon and three miles from the metro area’s international airport. Rankin First is qualifying 50 acres and working on documentation for another 170 acres.

Ceres Industrial Park. The Vicksburg-Warren Partnership has 1,000 available acres in the park, which is 10 miles east of Vicksburg on Interstate 20. There are three qualified parcels in the park totaling 266 acres.

Leland Industrial Park. The Washington County Economic Alliance has 500 qualified acres in this park. Less than one mile north of Leland, the park is at the intersection of U.S. Highway 82 and U.S. Highway 61. It is 16 miles from Greenville’s port.

Entergy Mississippi’s other qualified sites are in Adams, Bolivar, DeSoto, Hinds, Madison and Tunica counties.

Four years ago, Entergy Mississippi launched a new program designed to help level the playing field for Mississippi communities that were too often edged out of the competition when companies looked to establish or expand their businesses.

Since then, the Excellerator Competitive Communities Program has awarded more than $375,000 to economic development groups in our service area.

During the current pandemic, the work these organizations do for their communities is more important than ever. And these grants are more vital than ever as we work to help Mississippi recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19.

We congratulate this year’s winning organizations for their efforts in marketing, site readiness and organizational excellence. They will share more than $100,000 in matching grants to improve the economic prospects of the 16 counties they serve.

The number of marketing grant applications shows that economic development organizations are enhancing the ways they promote their communities to site selectors.  Our marketing grant winners are:

• Greater Jackson Alliance
• Greater Grenada Partnership
• Southwest Mississippi Partnership
• Washington County Economic Alliance

Our site readiness grant recipients invest in site readiness activities that support industrial growth and sustainability. They are:

• Claiborne County Economic Development District
• Hinds County Economic Development Authority
• Pike County Economic Development District
• Warren County Partnership

The success of a community is dependent on the health and structure of its economic development organization. Our organizational excellence winners are:  

• Washington County Economic Alliance
• Cleveland-Bolivar County Chamber of Commerce

Along with assessments and grants, the Excellerator program offers training and workshops to all counties in Entergy’s service area. Our economic development team works with communities year-round to help prepare them for growth. We invest in our communities so customers can have opportunities without having to leave the state. We want people to stay and thrive right here in Mississippi.

Learn more about economic development at Entergy and to help our communities grow at .

Ten Mississippi counties, with support from Entergy Mississippi, are working to close that gap. Each has graduated from an Entergy-sponsored ‘boot camp’ that trained them to become a certified ACT Work Ready community. The counties join 34 in our Mississippi service area that have already received ACT certification.

So What Is ACT and Why Should I Care?

A community’s workforce can be difficult to quantify, but ACT’s program gives a standardized and trusted way to communicate the skills base in a community with measurable data.  ACT does this through its community-based testing framework for workforce development. Its program equips job seekers, employers and their communities with tools for career alignment and growth.

In turn, our communities get a competitive edge when working to attract new industry or expand existing ones. Communities that are certified as ACT Work Ready show that they have a robust workforce effort in place and are committed to continuous improvement of that group. So…being ACT Work Ready can lead to jobs and growth in your community.

Sounds great! Why didn’t they do this earlier?

Simple economics. Gaining that competitive edge is almost never cheap or easy. Most ACT training sessions take place outside of the southeastern U.S. Counties that want to take part must pony up for travel, lodging, food and training. That can be tough, so to ensure that all our counties had the opportunity to become ACT Work Ready, Entergy Mississippi paid to bring the training here.

What happened next?

We hosted two boot camps:  the first was in May at Northwest Community College and the most recent was in August at Hinds Community College. DeSoto, Jefferson Davis, Montgomery, Quitman, Scott, Smith, Tate, Tallahatchie, Yalobusha and Yazoo all took part. Each could send at least two participants. We also opened the event to our communities that had entered or completed the program before.

By partnering with ACT, we were not only able to substantially reduce the cost for our communities to take part, but also enable them to train more people. It was the best opportunity for our communities with part-time or no economic development leadership to complete the program and take what they learned back home. They’ll now continue the process of certification by implementing testing in their communities to reach the goals set by ACT. It was a win-win for all.

A critical marker for business growth in the Delta is the talent pipeline. As the United States approaches full employment, companies looking for talent are challenged to find an educated, trained workforce to meet their specific needs. However, Mississippi is poised to meet that challenge. Communities and educators across Mississippi are intently focused on workforce training. This commitment to develop talent is a crucial element to expanding economic vitality and meeting the needs of Entergy’s business clients.

The Delta is fortunate to have educators and economic developers working hand-in-hand to create a robust talent pipeline. Today, more than 14,000 ACT National Career Readiness Certificates (NCRC) have been awarded in the 18 Delta communities and there are more than 400 Delta businesses supporting the ACT initiative. The ACT NCRC is a portable, evidence-based credential that certifies the essential skills for workplace success – vital in attracting new business. In addition, thanks to a strong existing industry base, there are more than 11,000 employees working in advanced industries such as pharmaceutical manufacturing, engineering-related services, electrical manufacturing and motor vehicle parts manufacturing. Numbers like these go a long way in helping Entergy Mississippi market the region’s Qualified Sites at the Rosedale Industrial Park and the Tunica Mega Site.

But in recruiting new business, we must not forget about the existing industries that have supported thousands of employees over the decades – Baxter International and Mars Food North America. Baxter’s Cleveland facility is the company’s longest-operating manufacturing site in the nation, starting initial operations in 1949, and now employing more than 600 local residents. This site has kept pace with the outstanding growth in medical device development and is the reason behind the region’s strength in the pharmaceutical cluster. Building on the Delta’s agricultural assets, Mars Foods opened its Greenville plant in 1978 with five packaging lines and one processing line. Today, the facility has grown to 250,000 square feet on 110 acres and recently expanded its research and development operation, investing $31 million to support the company’s global manufacturing operation.

Often, discussion about the Delta focuses on what the region doesn’t have. But with a growing national economy, Mississippi and the Delta have the opportunity to navigate the changing global market, find solutions to increase competitiveness and provide the tools for businesses and residents to prosper. Entergy Mississippi is an advocate and an asset to the Delta communities. We want to see a new day for the Delta, one with blossoming downtowns, a stable of existing industries that continue to expand, new businesses growing and classrooms filled with innovative thinkers – and Entergy Mississippi will be there to power it all and provide the support needed to make it a reality.

The magazine noted Entergy’s role in projects that resulted in some $4.25 billion of capital investment and the creation of more than 4,688 jobs in its four-state service territory in 2017.

We’re particularly proud that the magazine mentioned Entergy Mississippi’s Excellerator Grant program. Launched in 2017, the program helps our communities be more competitive in industrial development. Last year we awarded $125,000 grants to 10 counties through the program.

The article also mentioned our efforts at grid modernization, noting a $1.5 million project in Franklin County. We are moving an entire circuit there to improve service reliability. It involves replacing 125 wooden poles with about 160 new ones, using steel poles for highway crossings and replacing 147 spans of copper wire with 189 spans of stronger aluminum wire along 10 miles of line.

What does this project have to do with economic development? Everything. Reliable, affordable energy and a modern grid are crucial to serving business and industry, and their employees who often live in the same community.

The criteria Site Selection used for its rankings include:

• the use of innovative programs and incentives for business,
• website tools and data, and
• each utility’s job-creating infrastructure and facility investment trends.

The ranking is in the September 2018 print edition. You can read the article in its entirety .

Being a partner in growth in our communities is paramount. It’s great to know that Entergy’s objectives and actions around economic development align with our communities’ goals.  For us to repeatedly earn this title says a lot about the character of our company, our employees and our communities. Want to learn more about Entergy Mississippi’s economic development efforts? Visit .

Environmental site assessments, improved product development, enhanced talent pipelines. None of this is very sexy sounding—unless you’re a company looking to establish or expand its business.

Our economic development team knows what it takes to attract business and industry, and we’ve set out to ensure the state’s communities are competitive by awarding grants for exactly these types of things.  

Through our Excellerator Competitive Communities Program, now in its second year, we recently awarded $75,000 in grants to ten Mississippi communities to improve their competitiveness and local economy.  This year’s winning counties are Claiborne, Grenada, Madison, Montgomery, Pike, Tate, Tunica, Walthall, Warren and Washington.

These Mississippi communities and others already have advantages like proximity to major waterways and interstate systems, low cost of living and low utility rates. With Entergy’s expertise and financial support, they can improve their site readiness, marketing and other key areas that will help them further stand out to prospective businesses.

In addition to assessments and grants, we offer training and workshops to all counties in our service area through the Excellerator program. Our economic development team conducts community assessments annually so communities can prepare for the grant cycle each year.

But it’s about more than enhancing economic development. We’re investing in our communities so our customers can have opportunities without having to leave the state. Through this program, we’re helping people stay and thrive in Mississippi.

Because when our communities win, we all win.

Learn more about at Entergy and to help our communities grow at .

The ACT Certified Work Ready program links, aligns and matches a community’s workforce development efforts among employers, future employees and educational institutions. Through the program’s WorkKeys® assessment, counties can identify the skill level of the community’s workforce, as well as skills deficits, to then work with educators to build career pathways that are aligned to the needs of the community’s businesses. The National Career Readiness Certification is a nationally-recognized credential of essential workplace skills that enables individuals to document their readiness for a career.

In Entergy Mississippi’s 45-county service area, there are currently five certified ACT Work Ready Counties and nine others participating. Statewide, the program has a total of 74,651 ACT WorkKeys NCRC Levels achieved and more than 500 participating employers supporting and engaging in the program.

In May, Natchez Inc. and Concordia Parish Economic Development announced that the Miss Lou Region completed the required goals to become the first ACT Certified Work Ready Region to cross state lines. 

In addition, earlier this year, the Washington County Economic Alliance announced that it has achieved its certification as an ACT Work Ready Community. The certification will support Washington County in economic development, industry recruitment and bolster existing industry by linking workforce development to education and employers’ needs. In the same region, Bolivar and Sunflower counties have also achieved certification.

Business decision makers understand the value of having a job-ready, trainable pool of talent from which to choose to ensure their company’s profitability. Consultants working with such businesses also know that counties, educators, employers and individuals demonstrating the commitment of undertaking the ACT Work Ready program are dedicated to their clients’ success.

We are confident that the ACT Work Ready program is a valuable tool in delivering a credentialed, prepared workforce focused with the skills that employers look for when hiring. We are proud of the work our counties are undertaking to grow and support existing industry in the area and to demonstrate workforce standards for businesses looking to locate.