Federal Announcements

The Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration is awarding a $1.7 million grant to the Searcy County Government, Arkansas, to support manufacturing business growth. This grant will renovate a building in Marshall, Arkansas to support the establishment of a frozen foods manufacturing facility, creating jobs, and growing the local economy.

The U.S. Census Bureau today announced the winners of the second phase of the StatVentures Supply Chain Challenge. This challenge invited participants to propose new ways to provide more timely, granular and robust supply chain data. Winning teams submitted implementation roadmaps explaining how their idea would work to capture new or improved supply chain data on manufacturing, imports and exports, transportation and delivery of goods, and other key components of global supply chains.

The U.S. Department of Energy finalized Congressionally-mandated energy efficiency standards for distribution transformers to increase the resiliency and efficiency of America’s power grid, support good-paying, high-quality manufacturing jobs, and accelerate the deployment of affordable, reliable, and clean electricity around the nation.

The U.S. Department of Energy, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Labor, today announced the release of the Battery Workforce Initiative’s National Guideline Standards for registered apprenticeships for battery machine operators.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a plan that will boost biomass supply chain resiliency for domestic biobased product manufacturing, while also advancing environmental sustainability and market opportunities for small and mid-sized producers.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology plans to announce an open competition for a new Manufacturing USA institute focused on using artificial intelligence to improve the resilience of U.S. manufacturing. NIST anticipates that $70 million in federal funds will be invested in this new institute over five years, with an equal or greater contribution from private and other nonfederal funding sources.

The Department of Defense announced an award of $11.7 million via the Defense Production Act Investment Program to Ensign-Bickford Aerospace & Defense (EBAD) that will provide additional printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) production capacity at their Simsbury, CT location. EBAD will increase existing capacity and manufacturing processes to reduce cost and accelerate PCBA production.

The U.S. Department of Labor announced the appointments of 30 members to serve on the Advisory Committee on Apprenticeship to advise the Secretary of Labor on issues related to the national apprenticeship system. Through their work on the committee, members will leverage their knowledge and experience to provide advice and recommendations on ways to use the apprenticeship training model to improve equitable access to career pathways for America’s workers and jobseekers.

The U.S. National Science Foundation is investing $9.75 million to advance novel solutions for complex societal and economic challenges inspired by biological systems. NSF's investment awards 15 multidisciplinary teams to Phase 1 of the NSF Convergence Accelerator's Track M: Bio-Inspired Design Innovations.

The Department of Defense announced seven awards totaling $192.5 million through the Defense Production Act Investments Program to establish domestic manufacturing capabilities for critical chemicals.