After Lamb Weston’s abrupt departure from Connell left hundreds unemployed and the city’s budget devastated, the community now may have a clearer path to bringing a new company to town.

A $100,000 state grant to study potential industrial sites in Connell may provide a path to economic sustainability for a community still dealing with the closure of its largest employer.

A Norwegian company that had been eyeing the Tri-Cities for a lithium-ion battery component production facility ended its agreement with the city of Richland in 2024.

Q&A with Mike Crowley, president, North America, Lamb Weston.

From recruiting, retaining and retraining an effective workforce to mitigating potential supply chain disruptions, the group says it is more critical than ever for manufacturers to be prepared to navigate an increasingly dynamic marketplace. 

The company’s goal is to develop a nuclear supply chain campus with its own manufacturing facility as the anchor. That facility would come through a $3 billion investment while creating 1,000 direct jobs and another 3,000 that would support them.

Thankfully, the parties were able to find agreement to end the strike before it caused even more economic damage. We’re hopeful that with a new labor agreement comes a new era of manufacturing growth in Washington – and across the nation.

The low-carbon nitrate fertilizer produced at a $1.5 billion plant that’s proposed in north Richland has a distributor. 

One of the Mid-Columbia’s largest employers has shuttered a potato processing plant and laid off the facility’s roughly 375 workers as part of a restructuring plan.

Taxes, regulations, energy and workforce remain some of the manufacturing industry’s major challenges despite an increase in manufacturing jobs throughout the state.