Start-up delayed

Electric car company pushes launch to December

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010 2:20 p.m. (0)

The delay in startup of electric cars in Duncan will not affect the company’s state and local incentives package, but it will push back hiring at the facility, a company spokesman said this week.

If there are no more delays, the plant could be up and running in three to six months.

Curt Westlake, spokesman for CT&T in the company’s Atlanta office, said the delay was caused by the need to complete the distribution network.  Continue reading...

 

Workforce enabled

When it comes to manufacturing, knowing when to hire and when to let go is a matter of thinking outside the box

NOVEMBER 29, 2010 2:29 p.m. (0)

When BMW needs workers to ramp up production, it turns to a Georgia company for contingent workers.  When it needs to slow down, it lets them go.

With production on the upswing so is hiring of these full-time contingent workers by BMW’s employment partner since 2006, MAU Workforce Solutions of Augusta.

By year’s end, more than 1,600 MAU workers will be on the job, about 23 percent of BMW’s workforce of 7,000 at the Greer plant.  The vast majority are material handlers, such as forklift operators, and other logistic production workers.  Continue reading...

 

The Milliken Legacy

Milliken company will remain privately held

JANUARY 6, 2011 11:44 a.m. (0)

Roger Milliken’s epitaph, “Builder,” is simple, yet fitting.

Milliken, who died last week at the age of 95, transformed his family’s textile business into one of the largest textile and chemical companies in the world and one that produced products to make firefighter’s gear flame retardant and Jell-O pudding smooth.

He helped build Spartanburg Day School, helped get the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport built and helped make South Carolina green with the formation of the Noble Tree Foundation and his love of the environment.  Continue reading...

 

Clothed for success

Delta Apparel makes a niche in the business of what to wear

JANUARY 27, 2011 3:59 p.m. (0)

You can’t beat this for brand loyalty: The young women who wear colorful Soffe shorts for, say, cheerleading or jogging like to wear them with the waistband turned over to display the label.

Delta Apparel, the Greenville company that makes M.J. Soffe sportswear and other popular active wear, saw a good thing and did the logical.

“We ship them that way now,” said Robert Humphreys, chairman and chief executive officer.  Continue reading...

 

S.C.'s Big Dig

Why the Port of Charleston matters for the Upstate

FEBRUARY 3, 2011 3:44 p.m. (3)

No one is watching the battle over funding for deepening the Port at Charleston with more vested interest than the Upstate and the manufacturers here that are the port’s heaviest users.

Plans for dredging are being held up by refusal of South Carolina’s junior senator, Jim DeMint, to sign off on an appropriation of $379,000 for the Corps of Engineers to continue with the study phase of the project.

A tea party purist, DeMint says he does not oppose deepening the port only the appropriation as an earmark.  Sen. Lindsey Graham enthusiastically supports it.  Continue reading...

 

Proterra, moving on

Company has new cash sources after former investor convicted of Ponzi scheme

MAY 5, 2011 11:08 a.m. (0)

With fresh financing near to replace an investment from a convicted swindler, Proterra is eager to restore its financial credibility and get about building and selling its innovative battery-powered buses.

Proterra, which is based in Golden, Colo., but builds buses in Greenville, got caught up, innocently by all accounts, in a funding miasma that put it on the brink of insolvency caused by the ill-gotten gains of its major investor and minority owner.

In March, the investor, Francisco Illarramendi, who owned MK Energy and Infrastructure, pled guilty in federal court to raiding pension funds of the Venezuelan state-run oil company in a Ponzi scheme involving hundreds of millions of dollars, prosecutors say.  Continue reading...

 

Industrial age

The supply of available factory space is dwindling here

MAY 23, 2011 12:49 p.m. (0)

With acquisition of the Sara Lee plant, Amy’s Kitchen took a prime industrial property off the Upstate’s for-sale inventory of large plants.

That’s the good news. The bad news is availability of industrial buildings is growing thin, putting the area at a competitive disadvantage in competing for new manufacturers.

With construction of spec buildings at a 30-year low, the supply is not being replenished.  Continue reading...

 

They can see for miles and miles

As demand for fiber optic cables grows, AFL keeps production going seven days a week

JULY 7, 2011 12:31 p.m. (0)

In blinding speed, hair-thin glass fibers are bound together unit over unit in clockwise and counter clockwise twists, tested, sheathed and labeled to carry everything from energy off a utility pole to high-definition video to a home.

With strong demand for fiber optic cabling, AFL’s production lines in its 220,000-square-foot plant in Duncan are running four shifts a day, seven days a week.  Production at two other nearby AFL plants also is strong.

The main plant is turning out 400 to 600 miles of fiber cables per week, said H. Carr Pritchett III, product engineering manager.  Continue reading...

 

Greenville's gang of 13

Proterra finds new life thanks to a group of hometown investors

AUGUST 11, 2011 10:34 a.m. (0)

With Proterra out of cash to pay workers building battery-powered buses, a group of Greenville residents quietly raised the money to keep the company alive when no one else could or would.

They acted to keep Proterra viable not only for its jobs but also for its potential to attract a cluster of green energy transportation research and development to Upstate.

It is the untold story of how local investors gave Proterra a lifeline when its funding was lost and its credibility at risk, however innocently, with a federal fraud indictment of its main investor, a man no one here had ever met.  Continue reading...

 

Proterra moves here officially

Battery-powered bus manufacturer gets contract with Florida transit agency

OCTOBER 7, 2011 10:48 a.m. (0)

Proterra, the manufacturer of battery-powered buses, has moved headquarters to Greenville, hired a new chief executive officer, won a contract for three buses and has a “strong belief” of more sales to come.

The announcement of the sale of buses and a charging station to StarMetro, the Tallahassee, Fla., transit agency, was made Monday at the American Public Transportation Association EXPO in New Orleans. The deal has been anticipated since mid-summer.

At that meeting, Proterra introduced its new CEO, David Bennett, 50, a former Eaton Corp. vice president.  Continue reading...

 

Greer plant may become BMW's biggest

Added capacity will be the fourth major expansion since the plant opened in 1994

JANUARY 20, 2012 9:17 a.m. (0)

When BMW’s $900-million expansion of its Spartanburg plant is operational, the South Carolina facility will be in position to become BMW’s leading producer of vehicles for the world market.

Last year, it became the German company’s No. 2 plant in volume, and the capacity that will be added is a vote of confidence that the company is committed to aggressive expansion in South Carolina, company officials said.

The company said it will do the work over the next three years to bring capacity to at least 350,000 cars in the mid-term.  Last year, the plant produced 271,065 vehicles, 73 percent more than in 2010.  Continue reading...

 

S.C. exports on the rise

Automobile exports led all industries

MARCH 1, 2012 12:35 p.m. (0)

South Carolina’s exports increased 21.4 percent in 2011 to a total value of $24.6 billion of goods shipped to 198 countries, the South Carolina Department of Commerce reports.

Contributing to the increase were exporters in the Upstate, chiefly BMW, Michelin and GM.  BMW, which exports 70 percent of its output of more than 260,000 vehicles a year from its Spartanburg plant, is the nation’s largest exporter to non-NAFTA countries.

Automobile exports led all industries in increasing exports by 52 percent. With an increase of 36 percent, Germany replaced Canada as the state’s top export destination, a not-surprising shift since so many BMW cars produced here are shipped to BMW’s home ports in Germany for the European market.  Continue reading...

 

SEW-Eurodrive plans $20 million expansion

Company says it will add 40 to 50 jobs over the next three to five years

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.  Continue reading...