Florida Governor congratulates Gainesville company, releases new state unemployment rate
October 19th, 2012 by gainesvillechamber
Florida Governor Rick Scott personally congratulated home-grown company, Prioria Robotics, on their recent successes and expansion during a celebration in which he released an improvement in Florida’s unemployment rate and an increase in private sector jobs across the state of Florida.
“Today, we just learned that 3,500 new private sector jobs were created in September and Florida’s unemployment rate has now dropped to 8.7%,” said Scott. “This month’s rate is 1.7 percentage points lower than it was a year ago at this time.”
“In less than two years, the state’s businesses have created over 156,000 private sector jobs, so we are headed in the right direction, but there is still plenty of work to be done.”
The event was held by the Council for Economic Outreach at Prioria’s new location in downtown Gainesville, which is currently under construction.
“Prioria is a progressive and innovative technology company that has demonstrated its commitment to the community, a commitment leading to new jobs for Floridians and millions of dollars in capital investment,” said Scott. “With this expansion, 40 new jobs are on the way over the next three years.”
Prioria Robotics, a leader in the development and manufacturing of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), announced its corporate expansion project in August, 2012, bringing 40 new jobs and retaining an additional 31 positions in Gainesville. The Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce, Council for Economic Outreach (CEO), FloridaWorks, Alachua County, City of Gainesville Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and Enterprise Florida all partnered to assist Prioria with its expansion plans since the project began in July 2011. In addition, in June, 2012, Prioria announced it received $5.5 million in financing from three venture capital firms to further develop its unmanned aerial vehicles for military and civilian uses.
Gainesville has been at the forefront of economic development in Florida recently with home-grown companies like Prioria Robotics and RegisterPatient expanding locally and MindTree, a global IT and product engineering company, bringing an estimated 400 new jobs over the next five years, set to officially open in November.
