Mohawk, County Solve Hillsville Plant Power Issue

Hillsville, VA, July 1, 2009--By signing a performance agreement with Mohawk Industries on Monday, the Carroll County Board of Supervisors retained more than 150 jobs and one of the largest industries in the county.

As part of the performance agreement signed between Carroll County, the Carroll County IDA and Mohawk, the IDA will pay up to $280,000 toward an $800,000 industrial power backup system.

Mohawk, which currently employs 154 full-time workers at its site, has in return promised to utilize and operate its Carroll County facility for 7.5 years with a staffing level of at least 105 full-time employees.

Carroll County Board of Supervisors Chairman David Hutchins said Mohawk’s power problems locally go back several years. In 2006 and 2007, he said county officials were involved in numerous meetings with Mohawk to discuss the power problems and the amount of money the company was losing due to power sags and outages.

“When you see a blink in your lights at home, a flicker, Mohawk has (a problem of over $100,000),” Hutchins said. “It is a huge problem. That is all it takes, a second or less.”

“If your lights blink, Mohawk is down for eight hours,” Carroll County Administrator Gary Larrowe said.

Hutchins said Mohawk asked the county to work with it in finding a solution. He said the county discussed the problem with engineers from AEP and numerous other groups in the area. Hutchins said the solution came in an omniverter system, which serves as an instantaneous backup and filtering system in case of a power sag or outage.

Carroll will pay 35 percent or $280,000 toward the $800,000 omniverter, whichever is less. Mohawk will pay the remaining amount of the system, which will cost over $1 million when the price of installation and upgrades are added.

“While I certainly wouldn’t say that Mohawk was telling us they were going to leave, they had a serious problem with one year, I think it was 18 incidents, which is a million-plus dollars of loss,” Hutchins said.

As part of the performance agreement, Mohawk must repay the county’s portion of the omniverter, plus 20 percent liquidated damages, if it breaches any portion of the agreement.

Mohawk’s Carroll County facility extrudes, beams and weaves synthetic backing for Mohawk carpet and is consistently ranked as the company’s most efficient backing producer. The company has made significant investments at the Hillsville facility since acquiring it from Wayn-Tex in February 2005.