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Maury Alliance outlines strategic shift, cites Petainer investment and workforce focus
Summary
Maury Alliance reported a new 35-job, $10 million investment by Petainer and unveiled a 2025–2029 strategic plan that shifts emphasis from raw job counts to community enhancement, workforce development and targeted industry recruiting.
The Maury Alliance presented an update to the Maury County Commission on Jan. 21, reporting a new manufacturing investment and previewing a five-year strategic plan aimed at refining economic-development priorities.
Will Evans, representing the Maury Alliance, told commissioners that Petainer, a manufacturer of lightweight sustainable plastic packaging, will locate operations in Cherry Glen Industrial Park with roughly $10 million in capital investment and about 35 new jobs.
Evans said the Alliance’s economic dashboard shows most current projects are expansions by existing local employers rather than new relocations. He described a strategic transition from the five-year plan that ended in 2024 (Advanced Murray) to a new 2025–2029 plan titled Enhance Murray. The new plan emphasizes workforce development, targeted recruitment of higher-wage and infrastructure-responsible projects, product development (industrial parks and innovation campus work), and a new effort to build a cohesive community vision.
The Alliance also announced internal staffing changes and new roles to push workforce initiatives: the organization converted an events role into a full-time Align Murray program manager focused on workforce development and added a marketing and communications director. Evans said the Alliance will spend substantial parts of 2025 and 2026 convening stakeholders to craft a community playbook that will inform the later years of the five-year plan.
Upcoming events and local coordination: Evans flagged an Align Murray workforce summit set for Feb. 11 at First Farmers Northside and a Feb. 4 symposium on disaster recovery at Columbia State; commissioners were told the summit had been promoted to county partners and that the Alliance will send registration information. Commissioners asked the Alliance to include metrics that track not only jobs added but also jobs retained in-county (for instance, preventing residents’ commutes to Nashville), and they discussed working with TVA talent-accelerator findings on local workforce needs.
Ending: Commissioners welcomed the investment and the shift toward a community-focused development strategy; several commissioners urged continued attention to higher-wage opportunities and measures to keep employment and payroll dollars in Maury County.
