The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sherman, Texas, to be key in production of iPhone X
Maker of lasers vital to device opening new plant, adding 500 jobs.
While ads for the latest Apple iPhone show off dazzling features conceived by the Silicon Valley tech giant, some of the core technology powering it will come from a small city near the Texas and Oklahoma border.
Sherman — home to about 42,000 people — will soon play a supporting role in the production of the iPhone X.
So when Sherman’s city manager sees those Apple ads on TV, he thinks of the jobs it will bring to a huge, long-dormant building at the southern gateway of the North Texas city.
Finisar, a Sunnyvale, Calif.based supplier of technology to Apple, is building a manufacturing plant in Sherman. It’s scheduled to open with 500 employees in the second half of the year. The company was recently awarded $390 million from Apple to accelerate manufacturing of a kind of laser that powers some of the smartphone’s newest features, such as facial recognition that unlocks the phone and a portrait mode that enables its camera to take professional-looking photos.
Finisar also has operations in Allen but chose Sherman for its expansion because the city had a vacant facility that could easily be retrofitted. It could also draw from a large talent pool, thanks to North Texas’ growing population and history of semiconductor manufacturing by Texas Instruments and others.
The high-tech manufacturing plant is an economic boon for Sherman. Employees will range from engineers with doctoral degrees to line workers who are high school graduates, but the majority will be technicians and operators trained on the job,
said Craig Thompson, Finisar’s vice president of new markets.
Finisar offifficials say they’ve received more than 1,000 applications from cities in North Texas and other parts of the country. The company has already made offffffffffffers and hired some key personnel.
Sherman’s industrial hub along the U.S. 75 corridor dates back to the 1960s and 1970s but is experiencing a resurgence as numerous companies hire more employees. Its companies range from juice maker Sunny Delight and meat processor Tyson Foods to semiconductormaker Texas Instruments and a natural gas-fueled plant of Panda Power Funds. The city is about 65miles north of Dallas, too far to be considered part of the Dallas-FortWorth metroplex.
Sherman’s population has grown about 3 percent each year, according to City Manager Robby Hefton.
Hefton and Sherman Mayor David Plyler said the steady upward trend has given the city time to plan ahead and invest millions of dollars in capital projects, such as renovation of the public library, construction of a new high school and the addition of baseball fifields and parks. City leaders have pursued infrastructure plans, such as widening the nearby stretch of U.S. 75 to six lanes to ease congestion for freight.
Local economic development groups and industry started an advanced manufacturing program at Gray son College in 2015 to create a talent pipeline. High school students who get credits and certififications through the program get a guaranteed paid internship — and a potential job — at a local manufacturer.
Industry has benefited from the city’s large water supply and rules about air quality, Hefton said. The city has four times more water capacity than it uses and is subject to less stringent state air quality standards than cities in Collin County, since it’s in the less densely populated Grayson County.
With Finisar’s announcement, Sherman has gotten some national attention. Apple’s CEO mentioned the city in a tweet. The mayor and city manager led Apple’s chief operating offifficer, Jeffff Williams, on a walking tour near downtown Sherman’s restaurants and shops.
“It’s really exciting for our community to be in that company,” Plyler said. “It’s something we have been working so hard on. ... We see this as a validation of the approach we’ve taken.”
Finisar’s 165,000-squarefoot manufacturing plant in Allen has 370 employees. The Sherman facility will bemore than four times its size at almost 700,000 square feet.
Sherman and Allen’ s anticipated payroll will total $65 million, Finisar spokeswoman Victoria McDonald said. She declined to share starting salaries.
Both North Texas manufacturing plants will specialize in the manufacturing of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. The lasers, also known as VCSELs, emit light vertically instead of horizontally and use reflflected light to measure distance. They can fifit into small devices and help capture 3-D images, such as a person’s hand gestures or facial expressions.
That’s made them useful for consumer devices from smartphones to video game systems, said Thompson, Finisar’s vice president of newmarkets. He said they’re “one of, if not the, most exciting growth areas for our company.”
In an interview with C NBC, Apple’s chief operating offifficer Williams said VCSELs are “at the heart of some of the most advanced technology that Apple produces.” When making the iPhone X, he said, the tech giant realized that it needed 10 times more VCSELs than were available worldwide. He said Apple’s demand for the specialized lasers continues to grow.
Finisar received the $390 million award from Apple’s $1 billion Advanced Manufacturing Fund. It guarantees that Apple will spend that amount to work on VCSEL technology with the company. Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the creation of the fund in May as a way to show Apple’s commitment to U.S. jobcreation. Hemade the announcement after President Donald Trump criticized Apple for making products in China.