PSEG says it spends 1B annually with N.J. vendors

Public Service Enterprise Group spends nearly $1 billion with Garden State vendors annually and pays its own New Jersey-resident employees nearly the same amount, according to statistics provided by the company.

Public Service Enterprise Group spends nearly $1 billion with Garden State vendors annually and pays its own New Jersey-resident employees nearly the same amount, according to statistics provided by the company.

The Newark-based firm is the parent company of PSE&G, the state’s largest utility, which has about 2.5 million customers statewide.

Paul Rosengren, a PSEG spokesman, said this is the second time in his 15 years at the company that PSEG has publicly released such statistics. The last time was in the 1990s.

“We have a lot more impact in a lot more ways than we think people often recognize,” Rosengren said.

The statistics show the company pays its more than 9,000 New Jersey residents on its payroll about $965 million annually, and spends $984 million annually with 1,509 New Jersey vendors.

One of those vendors is Shelby Mechanical, in Cinnaminson.

Mike Bray, executive vice president at Shelby, said PSEG has had a major impact on his company’s bottom line in recent years. Shelby does a lot of maintenance and repair work for PSEG, and was a large part of the back-end technology project at PSEG’s Hudson Generating Station, in Jersey City. The project helped lower emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur and mercury at the facility.

Bray said PSEG contracts are very competitive, but he said the company is a good partner.

“They share a lot of the same philosophies as far as safety, quality and good relationships,” he said.

In a normal year, Bray said, PSEG contracts account for about 45 percent of Shelby’s business, though in 2010, when Shelby was working on the Hudson Generating Station project, that number was closer to 75 percent. He said the Hudson project “was particularly needed” because it came at a time when the number of available projects was slumping due to the economy.

Rosengren said the company picks its vendors based on the merits, not the state the company is based in, but “the tie goes to New Jersey … it’s not a deciding factor, but if two are similar, then the tie goes to New Jersey.”

In addition to its vendor spend and payroll, the company also said it pays $158 million to New Jersey retirees and survivors, $100 million to its nearly 86,000 New Jersey shareholders, and $375 million in local and state taxes.

“Even though we don’t have customers in every county in the state, we have an impact on every county,” Rosengren said.