Several top executives from The Shaw Group are heading up a newly created pipe fabrication company—Epic Piping—that this afternoon announced plans to invest $45.3 million to develop a manufacturing and production facility on a 70-acre site in Livingston Parish.
The site, located in Satsuma near the intersection of Interstate 12 and La. 63, is projected to employ more than 500 people over the next several years and will include a 200,000-square-foot headquarters building, according to company and elected officials, who were on hand for an afternoon press conference to announce the project.
Bernhard Capital Partners—the private equity firm created two years ago by Jim Bernhard, who retired in 2013 when The Shaw Group, which he founded and served as CEO, was acquired by CB&I—is a major investor in Epic Piping as well as the company’s investment adviser. It is unclear what level of ownership BCP has in the company and whether Jim Bernhard will be a member of the company’s board of directors.
Though Bernhard was at the announcement today, Epic executives were anxious to deflect attention away from their Shaw Group lineage. Instead, they are trying to focus on the investment in Livingston Parish and the jobs they promise their company will bring to the area.
Daily Report has the full story.
