A new manufacturing plant will open in Opp this summer, initially employing 25 people and possibly increasing to more than 50 employees by the end of the year.

MFG Galileo Composites, a sister company of MFG Alabama LLC, has signed a lease agreement with the city to occupy a new 40,000-square-foot building in the industrial park on State Hwy. 331 South.

Opp Mayor H.D. Edgar said the company will begin moving equipment to the building this month, and hopes to be completely moved in by mid-July. Operations are tentatively slated to begin in September.

“We have been in negotiations with this company for about a year,” Edgar said. “The plant manager has been to Opp and has surveyed the situation out and they liked what they saw. They selected Opp over a city in Texas, and one of the basic reasons they told us they selected Opp was because of the people in the area.”

In Opp, MFG Galileo will build components for “radomes,” which are dome-like housings for radar systems and are utilized at airports and scientific installations.

“These will be highly skilled jobs,” said Edgar, who estimates the salary at the facility will average about $14 an hour with benefits. “The employees will be operating computer-type equipment that will do the cutting out of the parts that make up the radomes. They’re like huge soccer balls; you’ve probably seen them at airports.”

Edgar said that hiring and training for the company will be handled by the Alabama Industrial Development Training Institute. Any prospective employees should contact the AIDT at www.aidt.edu.