A partnership between Southeastern Community College and Iowa Fertilizer Company is now official.
SCC President, Dr. Michael Ash, and IFC President Shawn Rana signed a workforce training agreement during a special ceremony on the college's West Burlington campus Monday morning.
Ash says the college will train the full-time employees IFC eventually hires to work at the plant being built near Wever in areas such as operations, logistics and maintenance.
"What the college is going to be doing as well is training and educating students to become the employees," says Ash, "to be the ones who are trained after they are hired."
Rana says the company hopes to start hiring full-time employees early next year.
More than 165 people are expected to work at the $1.8-billion dollar plant, which should go online in late 2015.
Rana says about 500 people are working at the site right now, with that number expected to grow to about 2,500 by late 2014.
He says construction is on schedule, with ammonia tanks being construction and a wastewater treatment plant scheduled to go online in a matter of months.
