NEWBERRY — Newberry County industries were the topic of the annual Toast of the Town event Tuesday, where three industries received county level awards for their commitment to Newberry County.
This annual event was made possible by various sponsors.
“I can’t say enough about our sponsors. It costs us about $8,500 to make Toast of the Town happen; and, this year we raised about $10,000 from 29 sponsors, the vast majority of them coming from outside the county. Both of those are records for us; and, we also set an attendance record with more than 100 guests. I think all this shows people both inside and outside our community are excited about what’s going on here in Newberry County,” said Rick Farmer, director, Newberry County Economic Development. “Thanks to our sponsors, we never spend a dime of public money hosting this event.”
The three industries to receive awards this year were: Metal Masters, Samsung and MM Technics.
Metal Masters
During Toast of the Town Metal Masters received a Growth Award from Newberry County.
“Born in Jalapa, Wayne McCullough grew up in Newberry County and spent a lot of time playing on the nearby dusty roads and cotton fields. As a boy, he picked cotton in the hot South Carolina sun for two cents a pound. It was cotton that got Wayne his first real job as a machinist at a cotton mill,” said Farmer. “It was that mill where Wayne McCullough first learned how to drill, turn and mill steel. It was in that mill where Wayne learned how to solve problems with heat and steel and elbow grease. It was in that mill where he learned to push hard and persevere.”
McCullough, along with a few partners, set out to establish their own business, a machine shop, according to Farmer. A few years later they built a small metal building for the business alongside U.S. 76, just north of Newberry. That building, now more than 40 years old, still stands today.
“Those first years were rough, though. There was no immediate success, no one got rich, in fact, in the beginning no one but the employees got paid. Wayne kept pushing forward, he knew he had found his calling, it was just a question of how to make it all work, how to take their skills and make the business a real success,” Farmer said. “It took an entire decade to see real profits. The company saw its first million-dollar sales year in 1983, but even with those big numbers, it would be yet another decade before the business really took off.”
In the mid-1990s McCullough branched out, according to Farmer. He took on new customers, restructured the business and bought out his final partner. Shortly thereafter, business took off.
In 2008 the business expanded with an additional building, constructed directly adjacent to his original building, and they had another small expansion in 2009. In 2014, the company announced a three million dollar, 20-job expansion – the biggest in the company’s history.
“This new expansion would build two more buildings — an office and shop, and then a powder coating facility — directly across the street from the original facility, and about triple the size. Once complete, the entire facility would account for some 80,000 square feet,” Farmer said. “The state of the art metal shop includes all of the normal metal shop equipment, like band saws and lathes and welding machines, but it also includes CNC machining, computer assisted design and computer assisted manufacturing (known as CAD/CAM) and even includes a new water jet, a machine that uses pressurized water with an abrasive powder to cut even thick metals, and to do it with precision.”
Today, Metal Masters has a couple hundred customers and 90 employees. Farmer announced that Metal Master is not slowing down, and in 2019, McCullough and his team are investing another two million dollars to add an additional 20,000 square feet to the facility.
“This is at least the fourth significant expansion at the company in the last 20 years,” Farmer said
Samsung
During Toast of the Town Samsung received an Investment Award from Newberry County.
Samsung represents the largest single investment of capital in the Newberry community. Newberry County Councilman Henry Livingston said the guaranteed minimum investment under their agreement is $350 million; but, to date Samsung has spent nearly half a billion dollars in Newberry.
“Samsung took over the building (the old Caterpillar building) in July of 2017. In fact, the day Caterpillar walked out was the day Samsung walked in. Samsung did incredible things right off the bat. It basically gutted that massive facility and kept only the walls and the roof,” Livingston said. “They dug down 30 feet to create foundations for its massive metal presses. It was under construction around the clock, 24 hours a day, to meet the deadline.”
Six months later, construction was completed. They took that 500,000 square foot box that was left behind, and built a brand new facility to make its packaging to the left, and a new building to manufacture parts to the right.
Samsung is currently building a 375,000 square foot warehouse to store its washers until they are shipped off to retailers, according to Livingston.
“When the new warehouse comes online this summer, the company will have nearly tripled the existing footprint to 1.3 million square feet,” he said.
The official job creation commitment was 954 jobs over several years. However, Livingston said in just a year and a half, Samsung has created about 800 jobs and is very near reaching this commitment.
“These jobs are competitive wages with quality benefits,” he said. “In 18 short months, Samsung has already become the second largest employer in our community, as well as a top five Newberry County taxpayer. The best part is even as Samsung reaches the goals it committed to, we believe we are not at the end of Samsung’s local growth, but really just at the beginning.”
Samsung plans to produce a majority of the washing machines to be sold in the United States here in Newberry County.
MM Technics
During Toast of the Town MM Technics received an Investment Award from Newberry County.
“Meinolf Muhr and his Uncle Michael first visited Newberry County in October of 2015, just Meinolf and his uncle. MM Technics is a decades-old family business headquartered in Germany,” said County Administrator Wayne Adams on the first visit of the MM Technics family.
Adams added that they were drawn here by the County’s spec building at the Mid-Carolina Commerce Park, though they eventually decided on a greenfield project.
“Meinolf’s metal stamping company would become Newberry County’s first BMW supplier, offering a Phase One workforce of 65 workers making 20 percent above the average wage in Newberry County,” Adams said. “In production for a year and a half now, the company has already exceeded its original estimate of a $13 million investment and will soon be adding a third press to increase capacity,” Adams said.
BMW has praised the MM Technics team for the start-up of their facility in Prosperity, according to Adams, and the company is now looking to expand into high-tech welding and assembly work for its automotive clients.
“Meinolf had other competitive options when he selected Newberry County. Toccoa, Georgia and Oconee County in South Carolina were tough competitors, and they had ready product available — a building pad in Oconee and an existing building in Toccoa,” Adams said. “Thanks to Alliance Consulting Engineering and THS Construction, a new 15-acre site was cleared and the building constructed within 11 months, meeting BMW’s tight timetable to begin production.”
