Western.

Volvo digs itself in deeper in Asheville

Volvo Construction Equipment will spend $30 million next year to double the size of its Asheville factory to about 400,000 square feet and add 264 workers, for a total of more than 500. The new employees will build four of the company's 11 models of excavators, along with other equipment. Sweden-based Volvo began making construction equipment in Asheville in the early 1980s after one of its divisions merged with Clark Equipment, which already was based there, to form VME Group. Volvo bought out Clark several years later and renamed the company Volvo Construction Equipment in 1995. The average wage for the new jobs will be more than $38,000 a year, about $8,000 more than the Buncombe County average. Volvo is eligible for about $3 million in state job-development grants.

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