Texas nanotech company M+W North to move headquarters to Capital Region

WATERVLIET -- A major player in the nanotechnology industry has announced it will be relocating its North American headquarters from Texas to the Capital Region in New York in a move expected to generate more than 250 new jobs in the area.

The announcement of M+W's move came Tuesday morning from company officials, administrators from the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale and Engineering and state Assembly members, who helped coordinate $6.5 million in capital funds for the move, part of a larger state effort to develop the Capital Region's growing nanotech industry.

M+W Group is a nanofabrication facility and development firm considered an "international leader in the nanoscale technology field," according to Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.

The company has based its regional headquarters at the Watervliet Arsenal since 2004, was selected last year to oversee construction of GlobalFoundries' Fab 2 microchip production plant in Malta.

The move is expected to create as many as 250 high-tech architectural, engineering and manufacturing jobs.

"The Watervliet relocation is integral to the expansion of a high-tech corridor connecting public universities and private research and development firms between the Capital District and Mohawk Valley," said Speaker Silver in a press release.

"As a leading global high-technology company that works everywhere in which major nanoelectronics manufacturing is located, we have found it is critical to have our home base where the action is – and the action is clearly in New York State," added M+W Americas Inc. President and CEO Rick Whitney, who went on to call upstate New York "the global epicenter and worldwide capital for nanotechnology education, innovation and commercialization," continuing, "