Thrush Aircraft gets $500,000 from One Georgia Equity Loan Fund

ALBANY — Thrush Aircraft has received a $500,000 low-interest loan from the OneGeorgia Equity Loan Fund to expand its production line. The influx of cash will also allow the company to add 100 new jobs to its payroll.

The OneGeorgia funds will be used to finance machinery to expand Thrush’s machine shop. That expansion will enable the company to produce an additional 24 aircraft per year, in addition to the job creation.

“Any time we can enhance industry and job growth in south Georgia, it’s good for the entire region and the state,” OneGeorgia Overview Committee Chairman state Rep. Ed Rynders, R-Leesburg, said.

Thrush Aircraft President Payne Hughes said the loan from OneGeorgia is just part of the company’s ongoing expansion efforts.

“This is all about expansion,” Hughes said. “We’ve spent more than $10 million in the past 18 months. We have invested a lot of money in this plant. We are currently producing around 50 aircraft a year, and we hope to double that production within the next two or three years.”

Hughes said the bulk of the OneGeorgia money is invested in a new double-column fine axis cutter, “a big one we just turned on last week and are programming it now. The new cutter is the biggest part of a $2.5 million investment in our machine shop.”

Thrush’s base model aerial application aircraft carries a list price of between $900,000 and $1 million per plane. The company currently has more than 220 employees.

The OneGeorgia program provides grants and loans for economic development activities to qualified applicants in rural Georgia for projects such as land acquisition, infrastructure development, airport enhancements, broadband creation, machinery purchases, business relocation assistance and entrepreneur support.

“We’ve been working on this with Thrush for a long time,” Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission President Justin Strickland said. “It’s good news for everybody in Southwest Georgia. It will help Thrush expand through a low-interest loan; they’ll build more aircraft and hire more people. That is a rapidly growing company.

“We are proud of Thrush and the fact their airplanes are used all over the world.”

Since 1966, more than 3,000 Thrush aircraft have been delivered. The current worldwide fleet now numbers more than 2,200 aircraft, including more than 1,500 that are turbine-powered.

The company’s airplanes fly in more than 80 countries, performing a variety of missions beyond traditional crop protection, chemical application and fertilization, including, sowing rice, feeding shrimp, applying oil dispersants, top-dressing timber, fire bombing, herbicide application, mosquito control, pesticide application, and special operations relating to drug eradication and surveillance.