Emerging technologies, new products and advanced training for a growing workforce are at the center of a $24.8 million U.S. Economic Development Administration grant for Southwest and Southside Virginia’s advanced manufacturing tech hub.
The grant, announced this week, comes from the American Relief Act of 2025, a Biden-era initiative supporting economic recovery in areas struck by hurricanes, flooding and other natural disasters in 2023 and 2024. The Trump administration has continued to carry out the act’s allocations, including about $1.45 billion from its Disaster Supplemental Grant Program, according to an economic development administration news release.
Such disasters as Hurricane Helene’s remnants in 2024 sparked the funding, which passed on bipartisan votes. The money can remedy issues in American manufacturing that date further back, said Nanci Hardwick, an entrepreneur with New River Valley concerns that include 3D manufacturing.
Hardwick, who founded MELD Manufacturing Corp., MELD PrintWorks Corp. and Aeroprobe Corp., remembered the Radford Foundry, which closed in 2013, after more than a century of operations.
MELD Manufacturing produces machinery that prints metal parts with a method that replaces forging. The printworks company uses the machines to make metal parts, Hardwick said in a phone call.
“I see it as a way for us to retain our greatness and to grow as a region and as a state, because we’re bringing back the ability to make large metal parts, in comparison to our current reality, which is buying them from overseas,” said Hardwick, whose companies are not part of the cohort receiving money through the federal grant. “We’re creating domestic production capability where there isn’t any today.
“And if you’ve lived in this community as long as I have, you know we had that capability here in the New River Valley. We had a foundry in Radford, and it’s one of many around the country that have closed, and we’ve lost that capability. It’s gone overseas.”
The disaster funding award will go to the Additive Manufacturing and Advanced Materials coalition, according to the economic development administration news release. Virginia Tech, in a separate announcement, said that it will play a central role in that tech hub, commonly called AM2.
The New River Valley Regional Commission will lead the initiative, which includes more than 65 industry, education, economic development and community partners from the New River Valley, Roanoke, Lynchburg and Danville-Martinsville regions.
“For several years, manufacturers and partners across the region have helped us identify where the gaps are — from testing new technologies to developing talent and bringing products to market,” Kevin Byrd, executive director of the New River Valley Regional Commission, said in the Virginia Tech news release. “This investment gives us the opportunity to turn that planning into action and build the capacity manufacturers need to compete and grow here.”
AM2’s work will focus on three projects, the regional commission said in its own news release.
- AM2 Studios, part of the Virginia Tech College of Engineering, will equip test beds for designing, prototyping, testing and optimizing new products using additive manufacturing processes.
- The AM2 Career Network will develop a new, nationally recognized credential for additive manufacturing and use expanded apprenticeship programs to train 2,000 workers. The Danville-based Institute for Advanced Learning and Research, collaborating with the Virginia Manufacturers Association’s Manufacturing Skills Institute, will lead that network.
- The New River Valley Regional Commission-led AM2 Consortium will develop connections with manufacturing companies, attract more industry to the region and manage an innovation grants competition to help manufacturing companies integrate additive manufacturing.
Growing beyond its footprint
Southwest and Southside Virginia already have 1,200 3D manufacturing facilities, employing 60,000 people making a range of products, including aerospace components, medical devices, construction materials and packaging, the Virginia Tech release said.
The new training and the resulting jobs would not go simply to those manufacturers, said Hardwick, a member of the GO Virginia economic initiative’s Region 2 council and the Virginia Manufacturers Association. It will foster new companies and their hiring, as well.
“When you implement a new technology into any manufacturing process, you don’t just bring that machine, you don’t just bring a 3D printer in,” she said. “You now need a workforce who can run those 3D printers. You need a workforce who can run the special inspection equipment for the parts that they put out. You need a workforce who can design components that are well suited for 3D printing.
“Maybe you need some new materials folks to help you consider what new materials … might make your part more lightweight or stronger … If you’re in anything that moves, better strength at a lighter weight automatically equals better performance.”
It is not a new effort. Nearly $30 million in state and federal funding went into it over the past three years, according to the NRV Regional Commission announcement.
The federal economic development administration granted AM2 a $500,000 grant, part of its 2023 Tech Hubs program to develop a 10-year roadmap for becoming a global hub in additive manufacturing and advanced materials tech.
GO Virginia awarded AM2 a $100,000 planning grant in 2023, and in April, it gave another $4.2 million to begin implementing its goals.
“What we’re really building is an ecosystem that will be supportive of growth in these areas where we already have a running start, but we need an ecosystem that connects all the parts,” John Provo, executive director of Virginia Tech’s Center for Economic and Community Engagement, said in a phone call.
“This program has a footprint that goes from South Boston and Danville through Roanoke and Blacksburg and Lynchburg, and so that’s a lot of places, and it’s a lot of amazing companies, big, little, small … research and educational institutions. It’s wonderful economic development partners, but this is the ecosystem, the connections, the tools in the toolbox for companies, for workers, that’s going to make it all hum.”
Access to expertise and equipment for testing is crucial for burgeoning companies, Floyd-based advanced manufacturing executive Vince Hatcher said in the Virginia Tech news release.
“What’s exciting about AM2 is the opportunity to create a clearer pathway from a company’s problem to the people and resources that can help solve it,” said Hatcher, director of operations at Hollingsworth & Vose, a Massachusetts-based company with operations in Floyd.
The announcement opens the door to recruit more companies to move facilities to the region, said Christopher Williams, a mechanical engineering professor at Virginia Tech and director of the university’s Design, Research, and Education for Additive Manufacturing Systems Laboratory.
“We unfortunately have not been able to talk about this until today, and I actually had a meeting with a company last week that was thinking about looking for a place to land in the United States, and I could not talk to them about this,” said Williams, one of the directors of the AM2 Studios. “But we’ll be calling them and letting them know like, OK, so we now have this resource that we can talk about openly.
“It’s gonna allow you to do advanced manufacturing and materials qualification and testing in a way that you would normally have to ship out your products somewhere else to get that done. We can do this right here in this region, next door to your future home, and that’s the whole name of the game in economic development.”
