Coveright Mulls Expansion at South Carolina Plant

Columbia, SC, August 9--Coveright Surfaces doesn’t make hardwood flooring and cabinets, but its 145 employees in Blythewood produce the wood-grain illusion, according to The State.com. Coveright’s paper goes into laminate flooring made at plants from Pergo’s near Raleigh to Kronotex’s in Barnwell. Now the German-owned company might expand at the Jenkins Brothers Road plant to make paper for the next generation of drywall. The project could add 20 to 40 more jobs and an investment of $5 million to $30 million by the end of 2006. The company is expected to decide by the end of the year whether to proceed, and if so, by how much, said Lou Bilodeau, plant manager since 1996. "We’re seeing more jobs coming our way," Bilodeau said. The plant now employs about 45 more people than it had in July 2003, when Akzo Nobel of Germany sold its Casco subsidiary to German and U.S. investors, who renamed the business Coveright Surfaces. Since the buyout, Coveright has invested about $35 million to double the plant’s capacity. Production jobs at the plant now pay an average of $14 per hour, with some jobs paying about $20 hourly, Bilodeau said. The next expansion would allow Coveright to make fiberglass paper to be used on the front and back surfaces of drywall. Since drywall replaced plaster in the 1950s, drywall has used paper for its front and back faces. The new fiberglass papers will allow drywall to be stronger, less prone to dents and holes, Bilodeau said. The new drywall is being test-marketed. One such product is Georgia Pacific’s Densarmor. The West Columbia Lowe’s sells the fiberglass-faced drywall for $10 for a ½-inch thick, 4-by-8 sheet, compared with $7.50 for a sheet of standard ½-inch drywall. The price gap is not quite that much, however, because Lowe’s uses Densarmor as a replacement for older types of moisture-resistant drywall that usually cost about a $1 more than a standard sheet, said store manager Craig Mason. Building codes typically require moisture-resistant drywall for bathrooms, kitchens and basements. Standard drywall carries a white color, while moisture-resistant is blue-green. The Blythewood plant produced papers only for kitchen cabinet surfaces until the Coveright buyout. Now, about 20 percent of its papers are sold to makers of laminate flooring, and Bilodeau expects half of production will go underfoot within two years. "We see laminate flooring as absolutely the biggest growth area in our business," he said. "It’s really come a long way."