St. Augustine, Fla., won out over other sites in the Southeast to be the new headquarters for Defenshield, a maker of ballistic protection equipment.
The announcement was made Friday, and company founder and CEO William Collins White said some of the office supplies will be delivered as early as Monday. The complete transition will take from six months to a year, he said.
Eventually, there will be 15-20 skilled workers employed here, White said.
The company describes itself as a “corporation manufacturing bullet, blast and fragment resistant equipment for the government, military, law enforcement and the private sector for anti-terror, force protection and physical security requirements.”
The total capital investment in the county will be around $2 million, said Norm Gregory, vice president of economic development for the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce.
“We worked with them for over a year now to get them to make this move to St. Johns County,” he said.
Defenshield has offices in Syracuse, N.Y., and Washington.
Among the cities Defenshield considered were Savannah, Wilmington, N.C.; Charleston, S.C.; and Jacksonville, Fla.
White pointed to the huge tax savings of moving from New York as a major incentive.
“We were looking for a place that was business friendly as well,” White said. “I came down here and those guys (from the Chamber of Commerce) bent over backwards for us.”
A self-professed gun enthusiast, White is also a fan of Florida’s less stringent firearms laws.
White said the actual manufacturing of Defenshield’s products are contracted out, possibly to facilities in Jacksonville in the near future.
The St. Augustine offices will be a place for building prototypes, research development, sales and marketing. Here, the company will employ workers in the legal, banking, accounting and human resources areas, among others.
“It’s going to be a big impact (on the local economy),” White said.
According to its website, Defenshield designs and produces a range of custom armor and transparent armor solutions including Barrier Caps, SafePoint Mobile Security Stations, SandBag Windows, SafeDesk armor for courthouses, FEMA-spec Hurricane Windows, .50-caliber-resistant Guardhouse Windows and frames for permanent construction buildings, and replacement window kits for the Cadillac-Gage Peacekeeper vehicles in use by many law enforcement agencies.
His biggest clients are the federal government, law enforcement and nuclear power plants.