More solar energy jobs coming soon to Las Vegas
Over the last nine months a solar parts manufacturer has added 100 jobs at its Las Vegas facility and plans to add another 100 by the end of next year.
Unimacts held an event this week to celebrate the expansion of its Las Vegas facility that brings the company’s total manufacturing space in Las Vegas to 127,000 square feet.
The expanded Unimacts facility, located next to The Orleans, will support Nextracker, a firm that creates solar tracking and solar panel performance technology, which will use the Las Vegas-made parts on solar projects throughout Nevada and the U.S.
The Las Vegas Unimacts facility produces metal torque tubes which help solar panels rotate during the day and the facility is partnered with Nextracker. The average pay for a line worker is $21 an hour.
“By partnering with Unimacts on this new production line, we’re bringing back American manufacturing jobs and building out America’s energy infrastructure to enhance energy security and de-risk the supply chain,” said Dan Shugar, founder and CEO of Nextracker, in a statement. “This plant will support our customers with quick shipping and American-made products.”
The Unimacts facility is the sixth facility Nextracker has dedicated for its operations since 2022, and the company announced other dedicated manufacturing lines in Texas, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Tennessee, according to a news release from Nextracker.
Unimacts has expanded quickly in Las Vegas and opened its first manufacturing facility in the area in early 2023. The company doesn’t plan to stop growing anytime soon, as there are plans for it to have over 200 jobs filled in Las Vegas by 2024.
Unimacts has focused on expanding operations in Las Vegas so the company can more easily access the growing solar industry in the Southwest, where there is a high demand for new solar projects, Unimacts CEO Matt Arnold said.
“We want this to be the premier facility in the Southwest, for the industrial side of solar,” Arnold previously told the Review-Journal.
The partnership provides a stable customer for Unimacts as it works to expand its U.S. manufacturing operations and helps Nextracker boost its capacity to create more rotating solar panels, which can boost their efficiency by 10 percent, according to Arnold.
“Unimacts is excited that our partnership with Nextracker will create new jobs and increase the amount of solar we can produce here in the U.S.,” said Arnold in a statement. “With the Nextracker dedicated line, we will be supporting gigawatts of utility-scale projects annually, powering homes and businesses across the Southwest and even as far east as Indiana and Kentucky.”
The Las Vegas facilities for Unimacts were one of the first manufacturing facilities the company opened in the U.S., in part to take advantage of financial incentives for U.S.-based operations offered through the Inflation Reduction Act. The Unimacts website shows it has one manufacturing facility in the U.S. in Houston.
Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com. Follow @seanhemmers34 on X.
