Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Tours Corning Pharmaceutical Glass Packaging Facility

Governor Hochul today visited the Corning Innovation Support Center in Big Flats and Corning's Research and Development Facility at Sullivan Park. The company is a leading producer of pharmaceutical glass packaging, which has been crucial in the deployment of the COVID-19 vaccine. In fact, the company has facilitated the delivery of over 3 billion vaccine doses thanks to its advanced vials and pharmaceutical glass tubing portfolio. Corning is one of the world's leading innovators in materials science, with a 170-year track record of life-changing inventions. The company combines its unparalleled expertise in glass science, ceramics science, and optical physics with proprietary manufacturing and engineering capabilities to develop category-defining products that transform industries and help move the world forward.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks are available below:

Thank you, Ron. I really, truly appreciate the warm welcome and the fabulous tour that we just completed minutes ago. And why am I here? Many reasons. First of all, I love this community. I've come here countless times as lieutenant governor. So much that some of the elected officials threatened to start charging me taxes for my residency here.

I want to thank all of you for joining us in this incredible journey. So to our elected officials, I want to thank you all. We have Senator Thomas O'Mara, who I work closely with in our State Capitol, as well as Assemblymember Phil Palmesano, Assemblymember Christopher Friend and of course our County Executive here in Chemung County, Chris Moss and Big Flats Town Supervisor, Ed Fairbrother. Let's give them a round of applause.

I was just with Wendell Weeks, the Chairman and CEO of Corning, who really shared an incredible story, but it's not one that's unfamiliar to me. When I was a little girl, my father was a united steel worker. He liked his father and brothers and others found the American dream by making steel in a little place called Lackawanna where I was born and my parents started married life in a trailer park very close to that plant. I was just there a week and a half ago to just remind myself of where I came from, my family came from. After getting an education, while he worked by day, my father decided to do a very radical thing and leave a secure job at the steel plant at age thirty, with five of us six kids already born, and join a very small company that was just starting out in technology and it ended up growing to be known as Computer Task Group with 3000 employees. Over many years, my dad ended up being the CEO.

Why is that story significant here? In the early days, when this company was fledgling, just trying to get its feet on the ground, my dad would travel the state in search of business, clients to be able to do their data processing, what a strange word that is today, to do their early technology work and some of their payroll processing. I joined my dad whenever I could, as my chance to see him and spend time with him. He brought me to Corning and I remember sitting in the waiting room so anxious to see whether or not my dad would land the deal, because that would have been so important to the story of my family, but also this business. And he got the deal. And I remember him being very excited when he walked out of Corning. So I want to thank, this is a long time ago.

Also, you know, manufacturing is in our DNA. It's what we do. You know, even before the advent of this great facility here, and we've been building things. This is part of our legacy as New Yorkers, particularly upstate, this is what we're known for. We've made incredible advances and the smartest engineers, the smartest developers and the smartest employees all congregate here and have the privilege of working at facilities like Corning.

So this is part of our story, but I think most of the world are familiar with Corning for all of its innovation and Pyrex and all the different dinnerware that we've used many times in our kitchens, I certainly did as a child. And know that it was made here in Big Flats. That was a point of pride for us. But what happened when foreign competition, other reasons it shut down, you know, very few people knew that this could be retooled in a way that the leaders of this organization and the labor community believe could be possible.

And what happened was, is the conversion of the facility here at Big Flats to one that really at the time, in 2010, we could not have known that eleven years later we'd be producing the vials that are saving lives with a vaccine during a global pandemic. They couldn't have foreseen that, but they sure were ready. And they were prepared when the opportunity came to be able to say to the government, we can do this and we can create the first re-engineered vial in over 100 years. This is the strongest, the best product known to man or woman. And this is what has been delivering the life-saving vaccines to three billion people.

And I just had my Moderna dose. I had my booster shot a week ago and you do Moderna, so I have a very strong feeling it from a vial just like this, and just to have had a chance to speak to the workforce and the people that are so proud of what they've done. When we think about the essential workers of the pandemic, we all have a certain image of mind. Certainly our healthcare workers who went into extraordinary, challenging circumstances at their own risk of life, but to have a facility like this kept open, to be able to keep people coming here, even though there was that fear, that uncertainty, that you could contract the virus at any given moment and bring it back to your loved ones. That's a real hero to me as well. And I want to give them tremendous recognition as Ron did and thank them for being part of creating this valor vial and little did we know we would need it so desperately.

I also want to recognize Corning for keeping their promises. When the Excelsior program in 2017 was joining with them when they announced a $95 million project investing in a new pharmaceutical product line, New York invested 7.75 million and they were asked to create 185 jobs. Well, I'm here to announce that they didn't just create 185 jobs, they created over 200 jobs. So thank you for keeping your commitment, what you've done here.

And I know there's more to come. You've had a long history, but I believe that you have an incredibly bright future. And the last reason I wanted to come here other than thank all of you for what you've done for, not just us, but people around the planet, is to also recognize this is National Manufacturing Month and I was speaking to many people in the industry a few months ago, and they said, you need to go to Corning and see this incredible product being made during National Manufacturing Month.

So it's kind of toward the end of the month, I got here just in time of the deadline, but I just want to thank everyone for your engaging with Empire State Development. You and me have a strong relationship already. I am so proud of this. I'm so proud of the work you do here, and I will be your willing partner as you innovate new ideas, as you think of new product lines, as you do anything you can to make sure that we keep Corning strong here in the State of New York, keep people working over 7,000 people employed, 6,000 locally. That to me is music to my ears.

I reached my hand out in friendship from my administration to do whatever it takes to make sure you succeed because when Corning succeeds, we all succeed. So thank you very much.