JACKSONVILLE, Ark. (KATV) \u2014 Southern California-based defense technology company Opto-Knowledge Systems Inc. (OKSI) is expanding into Jacksonville with a $5.4 million manufacturing facility that city leaders said will create hundreds of high-skilled jobs in Central Arkansas.<\/p>\n
The new facility will be located in Jacksonville’s industrial park. Groundbreaking is scheduled for August, with operations expected to begin later this year.<\/p>\n
Jacksonville Mayor Jeff Elmore said the project represents an opportunity to bring an out-of-state company into Arkansas while strengthening the region’s growing defense industry.<\/p>\n
“This is an opportunity for an outside-of-our-state company to move into our state, to expand here into Arkansas, Central Arkansas, and specifically Jacksonville,” Elmore said. “Ultimately, it’s going to be 200 new jobs that are provided here, which is huge. It’s great for our city and great for Central Arkansas.”<\/p>\n
The company expects to create 200 jobs over the next three years. Positions will include engineering, manufacturing, technical operations, artificial intelligence, and systems integration.<\/p>\n
Elmore said Jacksonville already has a workforce prepared for the new opportunities but expects the project to draw additional workers to the area.<\/p>\n
“We have a workforce here that’s ready to work,” Elmore said. “There will be people coming in. There will be people looking for new jobs, or some people who are in the industry already who will be actively moving here because of this opportunity.”<\/p>\n
Elmore said the investment builds on Central Arkansas’ growing defense sector and could help attract additional companies to the region.<\/p>\n
“One of my things that I have been after and wanting to do is to grow what has already been birthed here in Central Arkansas, and that is this defense corridor,” Elmore said. “I love to see this new sense of companies realizing what Central Arkansas has to offer and what we as Jacksonville, as a city, have to offer.”<\/p>\n
With construction expected to begin next month, city leaders said their focus will now shift to helping OKSI establish and grow its Arkansas operations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Ark. (KATV) \u2014 Southern California-based defense technology company Opto-Knowledge Systems Inc. (OKSI) is expanding into Jacksonville with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-336436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}