A passport services company opening a facility in Hot Springs will help meet the increased demand from would-be travelers to Canada and Mexico, the company's vice president said Monday.
Stanley Inc. will open the facility Tuesday for the U.S. State Department at the Hot Springs Office and Technology Park, with about 35 of the expected 150 employees, said vice president Paul Berlanger.
The company said the facility will print and mail U.S. passports and other travel documents. Stanley has a 10-year, $164.1 million contract with the government for the facility in Hot Springs.
"We have our staff starting today and they're undergoing orientation and training," Berlanger said in telephone interview Monday on his way to the site. "They're making the final connections and tweaks in software."
Berlanger said that as the work load increases, the company will bring in more workers with a second shift starting in June or July. He said the facility will be capable of producing up to 10 million passports in one year with a full work force.
But the facility may not hit the mark of producing 10 million passports this year because of fewer initial staff members and printers, Berlanger said. Only 25 of the expected 200 printers needed to print the travel documents are at the office now, he said.
However, it will lessen the demand on other facilities by helping meet travelers' needs, he said.
Passport demand and production has increased to record levels since a new regulation that took effect this year requiring Americans to have passports when traveling by air to any country _ and that's what led to the new facility in Hot Springs, Berlanger said.
"That was really the impetus for the state department to develop this facility _ to meet that requirement for the Western hemisphere," Berlanger said.
The State Department said earlier that passport applications received between October and this March have risen 44 percent over the same period in 2005-2006. Also, the department has said that routine passport processing could take 10 weeks instead of the previous six, and expedited processing could take four weeks instead of two weeks.
About 12 million passport applications were processed in 2006 and as many as 17 million are expected this year, the department said.
Berlanger said the Hot Springs facility won't handle passport applications, but instead will receive them electronically for processing. The Hot Springs office will receive applications from all over the United States, he said.
