"Welcome to your new home, Wacker family."

Wacker Chemie AG, a Munich, Germany-based company, plans to construct a new facility in Bradley County with an estimated capital investment of $1 billion and initial employment of approximately 500 highly skilled workers.

The new facility will produce hyperpure polycrystalline silicon, a key component in photovoltaics for solar energy and semiconductors for the electronics industry.

The new integrated site will be Wacker's first polysilicon production outside Germany, and their decision to build a site in Tennessee did not come by chance. Rather, it is the result of a comprehensive assessment process involving more than a dozen possible locations in Europe, the Americas and Asia.

The company opted for Bradley County in part because of "excellent infrastructure, abundant energy at a very competitive cost, minimized transportation costs and lead times for our U.S. customers, extension of our natural hedge via production outside the euro zone, protection of our their intellectual property, and, importantly enough, the excellent support we received for our project from local government, agencies and business partners."

The announcement by this global leader in the chemical industry is a major milestone in the community's history and a symbol of hope, particularly in the face of a global economic crisis. The Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce stands ready to continue our relationship of reliability and trust and extend to you the finest in true Southern hospitality.

For information about Wacker's Tennessee project, visit www.wacker.com/cms/en/regions/usa/tennessee/tennessee.jsp.