SEW-Eurodrive plans $20 million expansion

By Dick Hughes  

JUNE 7, 2012 10:27 a.m. (0)

SEW-Eurodrive, the family-owned global gear manufacturer and pioneer in drive-based automation, is expanding its Spartanburg County operation to customize and assemble gear boxes for the most muscular industrial purposes.

The company said it will invest $20 million in the coming expansion, which will add 40 to 50 jobs over the next three to five years to a workforce in Lyman that is now around 300.

The company bought land adjacent to its existing plant and U.S. corporate headquarters off Old Spartanburg Highway to erect a high-arched building of 150,000 square feet to accommodate cranes and storage space required for the 25-ton industrial gearboxes. The company is also building 40,000 square feet of corporate office space on the site.

A company spokesman said construction should begin this month, with the goal of having the new plant fully operational by “this time next year.”

The company received job credits and a $150,000 “set-aside grant” from the state as incentives to expand in Spartanburg, but the family spokesman said the incentives “were not important” in the decision to build the new facility in Lyman.

Assistance “for training purposes was the only thing we were interested in because it takes about six months to a year to get a person up to speed,” he said.

Secretary of Commerce Bobby Hitt said SEW-Eurodrive’s decision to expand in Spartanburg “serves as another indication of the company’s commitment to the state.” David Britt, who heads the County Council economic development committee, said it is further verification that “Spartanburg County is an excellent location to do business.”

Using existing workers and space, SEW already is doing limited production of the industrial gears, but cannot become fully operational until the building is completed and equipped.

The company spokesman said the gear parts are manufactured in a plant built in Germany in 2009 for heavy industrial purposes. From there, the parts are shipped to Lyman, modified as necessary for customer use and transported to domestic and international customers.

The end product is a gearbox built for use where heavy equipment is needed, such as in mining, cement aggregation, pulp and paper, rock crushing, and container loading and unloading.

“The new gearbox is up to a 25-ton package … and while there is modularity, these are special gearboxes that have to be designed from the ground up. You can’t just pull parts off the shelf. There will be some parts made here,” the spokesman said.

SEW-Eurodrive has been in the Upstate for nearly 30 years. Founded in Germany in 1931 as Sueddeutsche Elektromotoren Werke (Southern Germany Electric Motor Works, or SEW), it opened its first plant and sales office in the United States in Ohio in 1975.

The company opened the Lyman facility as a manufacturing plant and North American corporate office in 1983. As the business grew, the Lyman plant was expanded several times and, excluding the upcoming addition, comprises more than 500,000 square feet in two buildings, one for manufacturing and one for assembly.

This year, the Lyman plant will manufacture more than 400,000 gears and motors from sizes small enough to hold in your hand to industrial gearboxes weighing many tons.

“You wouldn’t know it, but our stuff affects you in multiple ways every day – from your clothing made on a machine to your automobile made on a machine to whatever you drink out of a bottle,” the family spokesman said.

SEW has four other assembly plants in the United States, as well as sales and technical offices in 60 locations. Sales are worldwide, and up 80 percent of its manufactured products are shipped overseas.

The company is owned by brothers Juergen Blickle, who is based in Lyman, and Rainer Blickle, who is based in Germany. Between them, they direct manufacturing, assembly and/or sales in 48 countries, including Germany, the United States, France, China, Finland, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore.

From a handful of workers in Germany at its start, SEW-Eurodrive has more than 14,000 employees worldwide. It is credited with several technological advances in motor drive systems and, according to the company, ranks No. 1 or No. 2 in markets where it competes. According to Wikipedia, it has annual sales in excess of 2 billion Euros ($2.4 billion).

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